


Insurance Fraud Never Felt So Good

by blueshine



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Inaccurate depictions of insurance filing because whoops I still need to do my own paperwork, Insurance Scammers to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Modern AU - no magic, Most characters show up at some point but I just tagged the most important ones, Pining, Sexy Insurance Scam, There's Only One Bed (At Least Three Times)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21872275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueshine/pseuds/blueshine
Summary: What's the point of having a cushy corporate paycheck if they take away two hundred dollars from it every month for insurance? Join Taako on his most dangerous quest yet: scamming privatized insurance. It sounds easy on paper, but he's going to need some extra help from his sister's boss to really seal the deal.And, the prize? Forty whole dollars.[On temporary hiatus until the virus stops fucking with my mental health]
Relationships: Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 302
Kudos: 241





	1. Save Money When You Bundle

"If I have to fill out one more form, I'll--I might have to eat my own scarf."

Without a word, Lup handed him another stack of forms and moved the end of Taako's scarf from his neck to his mouth. He spat out the scarf, but had to spittle a little bit more after that. The wool was warm and cozy, and shed too much to comfortably slide out of his mouth. He wouldn't have to wear a winter scarf if Magnus turned the air conditioning down, but the sweat machine claimed he was too hot all the time. He'd probably be less overheated if he didn't insist on doing fucking _pushups_ in his cubicle after every email he sent, but. Fine, a job like this could force most people into jitters. The air conditioning could be forgiven as long as Magnus didn't complain about the drawer in the communal file cabinet full of loose pudding.

Not to mention that Taako came up with as many excuses as he could to wear a scarf, since his aesthetic was weirdo trash wizard that fell out of a closet _._ Not that wizards existed, or that it was particularly fashionable. But still. It was the principle of the thing. Sure, there was a "company dress code" and Taako was "violating" it constantly, but his job was important enough to the company to overlook the strange eccentricities of the reclaimers.

(What did the reclaimers do to earn this respect? None of your business. Top secret.)

They weren't necessary enough to overlook the need to fill out a forest's worth of insurance forms, but, hey. Can't win every battle.

"Hilarious," he coughed out once he got all the fiber frays off of his tongue.

She pushed the forms closer to him. "You're being a baby."

"Well, obviously." Taako twirled his pen between his fingers and winked at his sister. "If I was sensible about it, they would'a sent someone from HR over."

She didn't look pleased by any of Taako's jabs. "Oh, so this was just a ploy to make my job even harder?"

"Please, like _your_ department is _hard,"_ he said, even though he knew being one step away from corporate like she was would be _insufferable_. She worked in a whole different department, one that was a whole lot busier than Taako's little slice of hell. She had a fancier job, sure, with a fancier paycheck, but she had to deal with a _lot_ of bullshit. All he had to do was some busywork and an occasional work trip with the two meatheads he had to share a space with.

Wasn't what any of them thought they'd end up doing, but hey. It paid because nobody else could figure out how to do it.

 _"My_ department is very hard, I get to work with--" Lup probably finished off that sentence with _Barry,_ but Taako had both fingers in his ears by the time she got there. He refused to hear anything about his _sister's_ sex life, no matter if it was a joke. Sure, he was glad they were together, and happy, and all that jazz. Lup deserved that nerd. But still. He didn't need to hear anything that wasn't cute PG-13 married couple shenanigans.

"If you hate the insurance forms so much, just get married," she teased once she ripped the fingers out of Taako's ears, "I didn't have to fill out any, I got Barry to file jointly."

As much as he didn't want to do this paperwork, he knew he'd have to, so he picked up the top paper in the stack Lup threw in front of him. He only half-paid attention to it as he caught up with Lup. They were both on the clock, so of course he would use up as much of their time as possible to fuck around instead of doing any real work. Life hack: do all your insurance forms in purple glitter ink, and there's a small percentage chance they'll send it back for you to do it again, so you can slack off _twice._ "Oh, yeah, like I'm going to get shotgun married to someone in the office just to skip out on paperwork."

"It's cheaper," she added, although it sounded more like gloating. "It only adds like...sixty extra dollars to be looped in with Barry's insurance."

 _"What?"_ No, fuck these papers. Taako got out a fresh sheet and clicked his glitter pen to do a few calculations. "So, hold on, let me do this math--"

"You hate math--"

"I can still _do it,_ you know!" Taako raised one hand as he ran a few numbers. Most people thought he was too gay for math, but he _did_ graduate at the top of his class in college, _thank you very much._ He liked other men so much he reached right around to be good at math. Like a gay mobious strip. A flaming klein bottle. And he knew what both those were, because. _Wow. Good at math._ He reached the end of his divisions and gawked at the number he came to. "You're saying you save, like...forty dollars a month just because you're tied up to Barry?"

Lup leaned over Taako's papers to inspect his work. "Where are you getting _forty?"_

"If you're attached to his plan, and you cut it in half--hold on, I'll write it better." He knew nobody but him could understand his own shorthand, not even his own sister. Hell, he could barely understand it. It took longer to write legibly, but he needed to run this by her. "So. Look at this shit. This is how much I'm paying, this is how much you're paying individually if you cut you and Barry's bill in half."

"Huh." Lup tilted her head to the side. She stared at the paper with a blank expression even though her voice cracked up two octaves. "I guess so!"

Merle popped up from his desk, chewing on one of his stale Werther's he always kept floating in the loose pudding drawer. "Is forty dollars a lot?"

"Shut up, old man, it's enough!" Taako didn't mean for that to come out as a shriek, but that's where his life ended up at. "That's my whole internet bill!"

Lup whipped her head to look at Taako so hard her ponytail whacked her in the nose. "Your bill's only forty a month?"

"I'm not the one with that high speed shit, I only get that 30 meg--gigs? Is it gigs or megs?" Taako took his glitter pen and rested it between his nose and his lips, folded his arms like he won this whole exchange. "Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I'm _frugal."_

Merle, unable to take a clue, still prodded his nose into their conversation. "You're also not payin' for your kids' Fork Knife macrotransactions."

"It's Fortnight," Lup said, her voice dead as a corpse.

Magnus decided this was the perfect time to join the conversation. "It's microtransactions."

"It's Fort _nite,"_ Taako corrected, ignoring Magnus. Sure, he only knew the spelling so he could get it wrong on purpose when he emailed that weird intern kid, but Lup and Merle didn't have to know that. He'd have to use _Fork Knife_ one of these days, though. He had to admit that was gold.

"I said _the same thing!"_ Poor Lup, unaware that _Night_ and _Nite_ have two very distinctive pronunciations, which both sounded a lot like _Knight_ but with subtle differences that could _totally_ be detected in regular conversation.

"Whatever. Unimportant. Go back to your den, old man." Taako waved Merle away like a sitcom butler and turned his full attention back to his sister. "How did you file your insurance?"

The previous scuffle forgotten, Lup immediately went back into business mode (the ability to steal from their employers to make up for the corporate hoops they had to jump through daily). "I didn't, Barry just listed me as a spouse on his forms." 

"So you pay _nothing_ for insurance?"

"Uh, not nothing?" She shrugged, unsure of how Taako was going to use this. "Because we work in the same office, it just deducts the cost equally from both our paychecks."

He eyed the insurance forms again, brow knit in intense thought. "That's still pretty good..."

"Oh no." Despite her obvious dread, Lup's lips curled into a devilish smile. "You're about to do something stupid."

Taako took the insurance forms in hand and ripped them in half.

"I've got something better to do than to fill out these forms." Taako rose out of his seat like a king standing from his throne to order an execution. He stuffed a few post-it notes and his wallet into one of his many pockets and waved for Lup to follow him out of the reclaimer's section of the cubicle camp. "C'mon."

* * *

"Hey, bud!" Barry's eyes lit up as Taako approached. The poor man had one of the company's tray lunches that were _technically_ free, but the price was paid in misery. "What are you doing here?"

"Insurance shopping." Taako dropped his bagged lunch on the table and sat down. Normally, Taako wouldn't be caught dead in the office cafeteria, but if he was going to find a fake husband, he wanted to see them in their natural habitats. This plan would only work if he could find a dude that was into men, single, and dense enough not to notice an extra forty dollars in his bank account every month.

"He thinks he can write his name on someone else's insurance forms." Lup followed up behind, sat down next to Barry, and scooted close enough for their thighs to touch. "As a spouse."

"I mean." Barry's face morphed into a few different states before he settled on one that looked like he was totally on board with Taako's plan. "It could work."

"Please _don't_ encourage him," she said, even though her smile said the opposite. "It's technically fraud," she added without any warning in her voice.

"What are they gonna do, throw me in jail?" Taako poked at Lup's lunch, silently lamenting that she also decided to take the complimentary work lunch. He thought about not-so-silently lamenting this later, but there were more important things to complain about. "Hey, do you think they'll send me to the fancy jail they put billionaires in?"

Lup snorted. "You think you're good enough for billionaire jail?"

"Why can't you pick someone at random?" Barry asked before Taako and Lup's tangent got any worse.

"We need to make this believable so it doesn't get unraveled in, like, two seconds." Taako pulled out his taco sandwich--a sandwich made out of the leftover taco meat from yesterday's dinner on a hot dog bun he still had from when he tried to make artisanal hot dogs. He took a bite out of it and ignored Lup's not-so-silent protests of the meal. "Who's single in here?"

"Uh..." Barry looked like he was trying _real_ hard not to address the sandwich and looked around the cafeteria. Bless his fucking heart, it looked like he was actually trying to help. "Lucretia just broke up with that girl from--"

"I said _believable,_ Barold." Taako tapped his shin under the table. Not enough to hurt, but enough to correct. "No matter how much gay and lesbian solidarity I can get, there's no way anyone'd believe either of us would get _married._ To _each other."_

"Fair enough." Barry jumped out of his seat like he just came up with the perfect solution. "Why don't you just ask Magnus or Merle?"

"Because Magnus is already married and Merle is--" Taako briefly remembered that time Merle came into work with assless chaps over a pair of briefs that had cartoon pineapples on it (and then declared that pineapples were "the universal symbol for hospitality"). "Merle is a _no."_

"There's that one guy from R&D--" Barry snapped his fingers a couple times trying to come up with the name. "--Luca?"

Lup shook her head. "That's Lucas, Luca's the janitor guy that kind of sounds like Skeletor."

"Hell no, not Lucas. He's straight." Taako squinted and saw Lucas drop his laptop halfway across the cafeteria. Serves the dude right for trying to bring work into lunch. "And, also, gross."

"And also like, barely out of college," Lup added. It was unclear whether she was grimacing at her mashed potatoes or the concept of Lucas Miller.

"Really? He looks like he's fuckin' ancient." From the way he scrambled on the floor to retrieve his laptop, Lucas looked like he could be in his fifties. Looks could be deceiving, though, and Taako did _not_ want to be on the wrong side of the line. "Yeah, I'll have to--to put a, uh, rule down: I'm not fake marrying a baby."

"Lup's nine years younger than I am."

"Yeah, but, she's fuckin'--halfway through her thirties, that's different than if you're like, thirty dating a college kid." He was glad the two of them didn't meet when he and Lup were younger. That would have been all kinds of wrong and weird. But there isn't the same amount of weird power dynamic between thirty and forty as there is between thirty and twenty. Lup was completely sound in making decisions by thirty, and she landed on a good one. Taako still wouldn't date anyone as old as Barry, but he made Lup happy and wasn't a creep, and that's all he could ask for in an in-law. "It would have been weird if you met her when she was twenty."

"Fair enough." Barry knew to let that be. They had this conversation dozens of times before, they all knew they were on the same page. Better to focus on the task at hand. "Brad?"

Taako made a fart noise and turned his thumb to the ground. "HR guy, he's the first guy to look at the papers. He'd _know_ he wasn't married to me."

"What about Pan?" Lup asked. She still wasn't all the way involved in this plan (implausible deniability), but she wasn't going to leave her brother out to dry.

"Isn't that one of _your_ boss' coworkers?" Taako didn't know a lot about the shareholders. He wasn't important enough to be on their radar, which was exactly how he liked it. Sure, the reclaimers had a cushy position, but they were only really famous to other people in the department. The only shareholder he ever spoke to was Istus, and that was only because she was his floor manager. She hardly counted. She actually _did_ work. "That high on the chain of command would be too suspicious."

"Also, he's hooking up with Merle, so he isn't really single," Barry added, as if he was talking about needing to buy batteries on the way back from work.

"He's _WH--"_

Lup's mouth clamped shut before she could make any kind of a scene. Taako wasn't sure why, since nobody would bother to listen in on their conversation enough to learn about his plan to commit forty dollars worth of insurance fraud. But she didn't seem afraid of her own noise level for Taako's sake, because a fancy executive looking man approached their table. Taako didn't know too much about Lup's coworkers, since she didn't deem them fun enough to hang out with outside work. He started to wonder if he should ask to be introduced to all her coworkers, though, because this one was _hot._ He must have just gotten back from a fancy meeting, because he was in a sharply fitted suit, textured hair freshly buzzed down to the scalp, and carrying a nice leather laptop case. His glasses had heavy rims, and it should have weighed down his whole face but it fit perfectly, an unfair advantage for someone with a beautiful face structure.

"Barry," he said with a voice made of silk, and held out a small cylinder wrapped in a shitty cafeteria napkin. He spoke in a slight British accent, like every word was carefully planned out and thought over. "I found your inhaler on the condiments counter."

"Oh, thanks boss." Barry unwrapped the inhaler and shoved it deep in his pockets, where Taako swore an ancient city could fit into. He looked up at the businessman with a worried eye, like a teenager that didn't know that their mom had a day off work. "I didn't know you were back from your, uh, trip."

"Just in time for the HR mess, yeah." His amiable, professional persona broke off in a single second as he shifted his eyes from Barry to Lup. He did not change his posture or move his arms, but it felt like an entirely different person entered the guy's body. "Lup."

Lup put on a facade of nonchalance. "Kravitz."

Oh, oh _shit,_ that was a hot name.

Kravitz tilted his chin up half an inch, so that he could look down on Lup a little better. "Do you have any clue who could have covered my whole desk in sticky notes while I was gone?"

"Oh, geez, that sounds awful." Lup brought up a spoonful of mashed potatoes to cover her smile. "Seems like something Maureen would do."

A low, dense _thud_ hit their lunch table as Kravitz slammed his open palm down on the cheap, textured plastic.

"Lup, I had to bring in _two_ shareholders into my office this morning, the people that decide whether we _both_ keep our jobs--and I didn't have time to check my office after my flight, so, guess what they saw!" He stuttered, and then pointed at Lup to stop her from answering. "That's right, the--our goddamn _bosses,_ Lup! And they were _so kind_ and went to help me to remove those stickers--"

Lup let out one nervous laugh. "Oh, _shit--"_

"Yeah, _yeah!_ Oh _shit_ is right, Lup, because--I'm sure you know this, but underneath the first layer of sticky notes? Was another layer--" Another slam on the table. "--and I'm sure you thought it was _funny_ that this layer had lo-o-o-oads of _dicks_ drawn on them, I'm sure that seemed like a _fun joke,_ but guess who _didn't_ think it was funny?"

Ack, ugh, but he was yelling so loud. Taako couldn't focus on what he was actually saying, just the tone of his voice. He must have been saying some funny shit, because the rest of the cafeteria were staring at their table. Lup came back at him with some choice words of her own. Gave the whole cafeteria a show. Taako just sat back and contemplated this new guy.

This guy had such a big personality, Taako was _floored_ he'd never seen or heard of him before. But as he argued with Lup, he remembered this voice and that twisted angered face. That face was pointed to him once, he was sure of it. He should have remembered someone this handsome, right?

Oh, _damn,_ this was the dude at last year's office Candlenights party. He came by and broke up the party when Lucas coated the entirety of the R&D office in resin after an ill-advised egg nog experiment. How did he get resin out of egg nog? They never found that out. Didn't matter. A bunch of other employees sent the reclaimers into the office to try and prank Lucas back, but it ended in a broken prosthetic (which Merle still hasn't gotten fixed, other than the duct tape he put on moments later) and a lot of shattered glass. Kravitz came by to yell at everyone involved. Taako assumed he was just some dude from corporate that was sent over to do damage control (a good instinct with the self-named Tres Horny Boys on the scene), but apparently he _did_ work here?

Taako didn't recognize him with the new haircut. Didn't he have dreads before? How is it fair for one person to look good in so many different configurations? Sure, Taako thought he looked good, but this guy was in another league.

He needed some more information.

"Hey," Taako said, quietly muttering to Barry across the table as Kravitz yelled over them, "is he gay?"

"What?" Barry tore his attention away from Lup and Kravitz' fight. "Uh, I think?"

Taako could have _hissed_ at that. "You _think?_ You work with him!"

"Yeah, but I'm not trying to flirt with him, I haven't noticed!" He flubbed like a dying fish, unqualified for this entire conversation. "I've been out of the dating scene for too long, I don't know how to tell anymore!"

"Were you ever _in_ the dating scene?" he asked, and allowed himself a moment to sneak out an evil grin.

Barry let out a huff. "I went to college."

"That means _nothing,_ I didn't date anyone in college."

A flash of mischief sparked behind Barry's eyes. "Does that make me cooler than you?"

Taako chose to ignore that. Barry looked timid to anyone that didn't know him, but if given an inch he'd take a goddamn mile, especially when it came to teasing his brother-in-law. That's how siblings worked, and it was nice that Barry fit into the role so easily. But this wasn't the time to wax poetic about his relationship with his brother in law, he had to figure out whether Kravitz played for his team or not.

"You know I'll have to talk to Brad about this again, right?"

"Yeah, yeah..." Lup looked everywhere she could that wasn't at Kravitz' face. Unfortunately for Taako, that meant that she saw him staring at her boss. She broke out into a knowing grin, and steered the subject away from her very good prank. Enough people in the cafeteria were staring for Kravitz to look a bit self conscious from it, so she had a good chance of distracting him. "Oh, hey, you've met my brother before, haven't you?"

"I have not." Kravitz took the olive branch and turned to meet Taako's eye. As soon as he did, though, all expression fell off his face like chalk in the rain. His breathing seemed to be in slow motion, but his eyes pressed the fast forward button, blinking rapidly to shake off his own nerves. It was hard to tell with a complexion like his, but his cheeks _might_ have gotten a few shades darker. "Oh, uh. Yeah, I haven't met you, I--yes, hello."

God, nobody in a relationship is _that_ hung up, and nobody straight would look at him _like that._

"Oh, yeah." Taako side-eyed Barry and laughed once. "He is."

Barry scoffed. "How can you--"

"I'm what?" Kravitz asked, his voice broken so hard it didn't even sound British for a second. Damn, Taako was good. Could scare a hot boy right out of his accent. That's talent.

"Don't worry about it." Taako jumped out of his seat and extended a hand towards Kravitz. "I've--I'm done, in this cafeteria, so, like. Thanks. Good to meet you, an' all that."

"Yes." Kravitz hesitated, and then moved forward to shake Taako's hand. "Good."

Taako did _not_ entertain the thought of how soft this man's hands were against his. He had a mission to go on. This dude better have been single. He'd make the perfect fake husband. Probably made so much money he wouldn't care about forty extra dollars, chaotic enough that if Taako _did_ get caught he'd be able to talk his way out of it, and high up enough in the company that nobody would question him having a husband out of nowhere. Away on business trips enough so that there wouldn't be many chances for awkward questions, and in a different department so Taako didn't have to see him. Taako glanced not-so-subtly down at Kravitz' hand as he shook it, putting on a friendly smile so Kravitz wouldn't suspect a thing.

No ring.

Hell yeah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everybody! You must have thought I was dead or something. No, I just have a lot going on at work and in my personal life! So this might be my last fic I'll ever write...but I couldn't pass up this idea. 
> 
> This thing's probably going to update weekly for a few weeks and then go to every other week (I'm excited to get out the early chapters but I also don't want complete burnout), so stay tuned! 
> 
> I know I haven't been answering comments (and the ones from before today I probably will leave unanswered unless they have a specific question, because there are...over two hundred of them WHOOPS) BUT I appreciate all of them! And I really hope you enjoy this next mess. (Because it is going to be a mess.)
> 
> also, it's my birthday! woo, a quarter of a century, wow


	2. Claiming A Dependent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako goes on a stealth mission, and totally doesn't get caught. Until he does.

There aren't many times in a person's life when they can pull out some sick Mission Impossible stunts.

Taako was not a normal person, though, so he had plenty of practice with this Pink Panther shit.

It wasn't even like it was hard. The HR office was mostly run by _Brad Bradson,_ who seemed like he had his shit together, but the inside his brain was just a cocker spaniel in the middle of a room full of pigeons. It wasn't even _a thing_ to set off a glue trap in the server maintenance room (sorry, Avi) and wait for Brad to rush out of his room to address the problem. Could spend a half hour trying to find the culprit.

Little did he know, the culprit had bigger fish to fry, and forty more dollars to get.

Hopefully Brad didn't lock the door. He was banking on Brad being too frenzied with the glue trap to remember to lock the fort down. Taako wanted this to be a clean mission, and while he _could_ have picked the lock on the HR door, Brad had seen him tamper locks before, and would be able to trace it back to him without much trouble. It wasn't like anyone else in the office knew how to--

Oh, wait, he saw Carey doing it at last year's Candlenights party.

And Magnus helped her.

But there was a difference between Carey's quick and efficient picks and Magnus' strategies (punching a door so hard the knob falls off), and Taako wasn't in the mood to make that gamble with Brad. This was a precision stealth mission. Who knew what kind of hot water he'd be in if he got caught for this? He was only protected so much by his reclaimer status. Thankfully, fate was on Taako's side, and the door swung open without any need for bobby pins or credit cards, or however the fuck people pick locks. Taako wouldn't know.

(He _would_ know, but it was much easier to feign ignorance than explain why he knew how to pick locks.)

Now, if Brad had any brains in that little empty snowglobe he tried to pass off as a skull, he would have put security in his office. He would have done something to protect all his important papers. A safe, maybe. Some kind of lock on his file cabinet. But Brad was tired and underpaid, which Taako would feel bad about if he cared even a little bit about someone with a last name like _Bradson._ It didn't really matter, as long as it got Taako in the office. He could worry about the safety of all his personal information later.

And hey, if he got caught, he could claim he was doing the office a _favor_ by making an example of how insecure they kept the room full of social security numbers and highly personal information.

He didn't know how much time he bought with the glue trap, so this needed to be quick. Get in, write his name on an HR document, initial it a few times, out. Open and shut. Two step plan. Nothing complicated here, no sir! No need to unnecessarily put more risk into this, that would be foolish, and bad, and reckless.

Okay, but he, like, _totally_ had some extra time to fudge a line or two his yearly review. Corporate stealing wasn't really stealing anyway, Taako knew the CEO made way more money than he should. Who would notice if he had an extra percentage on his raise? Taako was surprised he was getting a raise in the first place, but it wasn't like anyone outside him, Merle, and Magnus could do this job. What exactly was their job? That's a secret. Nobody needed to know.

Nobody also needed to know that Taako wasn't exactly sure what a reclaimer was, and neither were Magnus and Merle.

By the time he made it seem like he was getting a whole extra percentage raise next quarter, the door to the office wiggled open. Everything in the room felt like it paused, except it _didn't,_ because the doorknob turned right in front of Taako's eyes.

He probably should have locked the door, _shit._

But, okay. Okay! This was fine, it would just have to take a little improvising. Taako was a practical guy, a pragmatist, pretty logical, he could sort this all out without arousing (nice) any suspicion at all, right? Taako grabbed an unfiled stack of papers off of Brad's desk and ducked under. He could only hope Kravitz' insurance forms were in here and Brad hadn't had a chance to review them. Taako didn't waste any time trying to get comfortable under the desk, his legs folded painfully as he flipped through the stack of forms like a stressed 1920's secretary flipping through a Rolodex trying to find the number of their boss' favorite hitman.

Taako heard the door creak open.

"You _have_ to be joking, you know, I vasn't anywhere _near_ ze maintenance room--"

"I'm sorry, Brian, but we found another glue trap in your desk," a voice that could only be Brian's said, "it's the same as the one we found in maintenance."

Oh, right. Taako also put a glue trap in Magic Brian's office.

You know, for funsies.

"Are you sure I'm not just another victim?" Brian sounded extremely offended, and he was technically innocent, but he was also a shitty actor on a good day. Nothing he said sounded believable, ever. "Who knows how many more of zhose traps vere in ze office?"

"We checked all around the rest of the office and these were the only two glue traps." Brad sounded annoyed, but also genuinely sorry. Gross. Nobody had the right to be this empathetic. "I'm sorry, Brian, but you've been on and off probation for years. We've done our best to give you a fair chance."

Taako tuned out of their conversation as he made an effort to silently look through the pile. Office politics weren't his thing. Why should he care more when this problem was technically his fault? As far as he's ever heard, Magic Brian was kind of a dick. These papers and Taako's forty dollars were way more important than Magic Brian's job. He peeled back every page with exquisite care, and moved a bit faster when Brad and Brian's voices picked up.

He flew past Lydia, Noelle, Killian, Davenport, and Leon as Brian broke out into a hurried angry rant.

He carefully thumbed through Gundren's packet as Brain let out a quiet sob.

He found Boyland, and Ren, and Klaarg, and Kravitz, and Jerry--

_Kravitz!_

There it was. All the papers with Kravitz' financial and health information. His social security number had 69 in it _twice!_ If Taako was, like, an actual criminal (translation: confident enough not to get caught), he could go a step further and do some mega identity theft. But Kravitz had a pretty face, and Lup didn't hate his guts, so the dude was safe. Taako was just going to take a minute to sign his name on some--

Shit, he didn't grab a pen.

Alright, no panicking: back to Brad and Brian. Maybe Taako could just wait out this whole shebang, and sign the papers when they left the office?

But waiting turned into half an hour. And half an hour turned to an hour. Taako could be patient (or, stubborn), but some things were a little too much. Some guy with a fake accent blubbering about his job? No thanks, Taako could do without that. It was easy to kill time, but the limited space and his necessary silence made time feel endless. He spent five minutes contemplating whether he should eat some old gum he found in his hiding hole. He spent ten minutes memorizing the passwords Brad printed out and taped to the underside of his desk. He spent twenty more minutes looking at the weirdly high number of dependents on Boyland's insurance forms. Taako realized he had a phone in the middle of a fun "game" where he ripped carpet threads out of the floor.

He didn't have to turn down his brightness or sound, because he did that before he went on a stealth mission. Taako always came prepared, and he wasn't going to be the asshole that flubbed his own insurance fraud because his sister texted him twelve times asking how the crime was going.

Speaking of, he had twelve texts from Lup.

Fuck it, he didn't read any of them. Lup was a lifeline now. What else do people need siblings for, other than covert insurance fraud assistance? He shot her a quick text reading, "hey, stuck at brad's, call him out of the office thanks," and hoped she would actually--

Oh, yeah, she responded immediately with "you owe me ;)," which wasn't ominous at all.

Seconds later, Brad's office phone rang.

"Hello, this is Brad Bradson, HR department." It would be scary how fast Brad could go from disappointed and angry to a perfect HR voice, but he wasn't even intimidating for a second during his conversation with Brian.

The voice quickly turned to horror after a minute or two of Lup's electronically muffled voice.

Brad thanked her and slammed the phone on the receiver. "Brian, I think we're going to have to talk to some of your supervisors about this," Brad said as he stood up from his desk chair. He walked away from the desk and gave Taako a little more legroom. "Someone found _spider eggs_ in a _third_ glue trap."

Taako could picture Lup setting the glue trap right that second, phone in hand at the same time. What a good sister. He briefly wondered how she got her hands on spider eggs, but then he remembered Barry Bluejeans was his brother-in-law.

"But--hold on, Brad, don't you think zis is a little ridiculous? I throw _one_ rancho party--" Footsteps got quieter, voices got softer, and a too-loud slam of the office door.

Eugh, shit, Taako might have gotten that guy fired. That's, like, almost murder.

Everyone spent so much time in this office that it felt like when someone was fired, they were dead. Magnus always pushed back against this, citing that his wife was fired and they still see _her_ all the time, but was Taako going to listen to Magnus? No. This was a good metaphor and he knew it.

Either way, Magic Brian might be dead, and it was Taako's fault, and--wow, there was no way he was even going to pretend to be guilty about that. Hell no. Time to get a pen and get a cool forty dollars, monthly, until either he or Kravitz leave the company, or get married for real.

Pssh, like that would ever happen.

Taako signed his name in a few places on Kravitz' insurance forms, put some of his own information in some blank spaces, and viola! A whole crime. He slid Kravitz' insurance packet back in the stack, placed the whole mass of papers where he found it. He could only hope Brad was too frazzled by his own job to not notice it was ever gone in the first place. Lup bought him a lot more time than he needed, and Taako briefly wondered if he should go and see if the rumors of the embezzling janitor were true, but he knew when to stop pushing his luck. He made everything look like it did before he entered the office, and walked away with no consequences whatsoever.

This would be the easiest money Taako ever earned.

* * *

Eighty extra dollars later, it was time for company trivia night.

They actually did trivia once a month, but Taako didn't attend all of them. He was banned from playing long ago, and only dropped in when he felt like heckling the host, Brad. Taako figured it was safe not to poke fun at the guy too hard last month, when he just started to get the extra money. But two months passed, eighty dollars were stolen from the insurance company, and nothing happened. He could live a little in the office after hours, terrorize his coworkers, hang out with the handful of people he did like (shocker).

It wasn't the most elaborate gathering. Just some lukewarm sodas in plastic red cups and various chips people brought in. There was never any real food, but it was common to run out to have dinner with a group of coworkers before the trivia started. People took off their blazers and got as comfortable they could be in business casual wear. Carey was smart, and always brought jeans in a backpack so she could change later. They pulled down the projector screen in the bigger conference room, and Avi would hook up his switch before trivia started.

(Taako was also banned from playing Jackbox before the proper trivia started, for obvious reasons.)

Once the trivia started, Taako decided to duck out. He was banned from it anyway, and it was super boring to just _watch_ trivia. If he wanted to do that, he'd just go home and binge Jeopardy. But he wouldn't do that, because he wasn't a straight white guy with a bachelor's degree in business. He decided to make one more round to let his real friends know he was bouncing.

After a too-long conversation with Merle about not touching the poison ivy growing in his apartment's courtyard, a solid hand came down to rest on Taako's shoulder. The hand was connected to a _very nice_ arm, which sloped into an unfairly sculpted neck, which held a face that both terrified and thrilled Taako.

Kravitz.

"Oh, dunk, it's sticky note dick man." Best to feign ignorance with all of this, right? Maybe the dude mistook him for Lup, which was pretty much impossible, but. Glass half full? "What's up?"

"I'm not--" The hand on his shoulder stuttered. _"Sticky note dick man?"_

"That's what Lup did to your desk."

"It _was_ what she did to my desk." Kravitz took a moment to pull himself together. Oh no. He looked like a man on a mission, and Taako's gut twisted with the thought of what that mission could be. "I'm sorry we didn't talk much when she introduced us. I don't think she gave me your name, it was a pretty quick meeting."

No, this guy was just being friendly. He didn't know, he couldn't know, _fuck off, Taako, stop looking like you're already caught._ "Uh, yeah, it's--"

"Taako, isn't it?" Kravitz' face formed a tight smile. "The name that’s on my dependents list on my new insurance card?"

"It is?" _Shit._ Unfair for his voice to crack like that in adulthood. "Wow, must be a glitch in the system, huh?"

"I work with your sister, Taako, I know what the two of you are capable of." Kravitz looked around the room, suddenly just as nervous as Taako. He schooled his face into something a bit more serious and leaned in to Taako, whispering, "we need to talk about this one, you know."

"Alright, fine." Taako raised his hands like this was a hold up. "In private."

"In private, yes." Kravitz smiled and held out an arm. The gesture felt more inviting than threatening. "My office isn't far, let's go."

Despite every instinct not to, Taako took his arm and followed him away from the trivia crowd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, this one was a little shorter, but next time...we start to get into some shit >:)
> 
> thanks to everyone that's interested in this fic so far! I'm having so much fun with it already.


	3. Co-conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new player enters the game.

The office halls were dark at night. Brad had a strict "no working" policy during trivia night, and the cleaning crew didn't need the lights because they joined in on the party too. When Taako reached for the lights, Kravitz stopped him. They didn't want to get caught. Kravitz lit the way with the light of his phone. It should have been creepy for him to insist to keep things dark, but Taako couldn't bring himself to be scared by _this guy._ He worked with Lup, so what the fuck was Kravitz going to do? All Taako would have to do was say one bad word about him and she'd get him fired somehow. Either from the company, or with actual, physical fire. People watched the two of them leave the conference hall, there were witnesses.

On top of that, Kravitz didn't give off any red flags. He was likable. And, sure, that doesn't mean jack shit when you're dealing with an asshole, people can act nice, but he didn't get that vibe from Kravitz. Sometimes a gut feeling can turn out to be right. Taako only spoke to him for a collective twenty minutes and knew this man was 100% dork energy wrapped in an anxiety tortilla. Sure, he had a habit of blowing up and he was a little chaotic, but Taako didn't feel unsafe around the guy. He seemed okay.

And if he wasn't, Taako could always bite him and run away.

They used the stairs instead of the elevator, mostly because some goon thought it would be funny to draw a clown face on the inside of the doors. It didn't get painted over yet, and neither of them were too thrilled to get inside a haunted clown elevator in the dark. They kept climbing flights until Taako was too nervous to ask exactly _how_ high up Kravitz was in his department. When they finally moved onto one of the floors, Taako almost died.

"Don't you work in the same department as Lup?" he asked, eyes wide as he looked around one of the fanciest floors in the company. Taako had only been up here once, during some schmoozy event for the shareholders before the company realized the reclaimers weren't built for talking to any of the higher-ups. All the amenities were upgrades from what could be found on the floors below. The water cooler was glass and had lemons floating in it, and was accompanied by a soda machine. The vending machines were stocked and outfitted with a smart screen, instead of the rickety ancient ones Taako could steal from with a quarter on a string. There weren't cubicles, just a large conference and break area smashed in the middle. Every office was on the end for maximum window space, and the corner offices were enormous. The whole thing was simultaneously chic and boring, the safest design choices in the world. It was a space designed to impress everyone, but without catering to any specific aesthetic tastes.

Fancy, but dull.

Taako could hardly imagine what the higher floors looked like. How much money did this company make, again?

"I do, but I talk to a lot of stuck up rich people, so I have an office up here to meet them in," Kravitz answered, as if he was not also a stuck up rich person. "I do most of my work in a cubicle across from your sister."

"Why would you? This place is dope." Fuck it, Brad wasn't here. Taako ran over and flipped the light switch. This place was lavish and excessive and gross, but why not enjoy it while he could? "Look at this, you assholes have one of those Coke Freestyle machines, this is corporate nonsense!"

Kravitz ducked his head in embarrassment for a reason Taako couldn’t even imagine. C'mon, live it up. "The people here are a little insufferable," he said in a whisper as he passed Taako, as if he were afraid anyone would be here at fuck-off in the night.

If Taako wasn't about to be yelled at for insurance fraud, he would have told Kravitz that he was one of those insufferable rich guys. He worked directly with corporate and went on nice trips for a living. Lup and Barry worked with corporate, sure, but you don't have to lean in to the whole thing for the job. For fuck's sake, he wore a three piece suit to work every day. He was sure this suit was different than the other two he'd seen Kravitz in before.

Except for the shirt. That looked the same. But maybe it was his favorite shirt. Rich guys have preferences too.

Ignoring Kravitz led him all the way down to the hall, near the elevators. They walked toward the hall corner, near one of the fancy offices. _Ooh la la,_ he had a corner office? Guy must be even more stacked than he thought. Taako took the hint and rushed forward. He pulled on the knob, but it didn't turn. Locked tight.

Oh, this wasn't Kravitz' door. The nameplate on the front belonged to some chick named Raven.

Kravitz leveled a look at him and opened the broom closet right next to the door Taako still had his mitts on. He formed one tight smile and walked inside, leaving it open for Taako to follow suit.

It wasn't a broom closet, but it looked like it used to be. The room was long and barely wide enough to be considered a room. One tiny room jutted into the office, right at the entrance, with a half door that Taako could barely reach. Barely any furniture, just Kravitz' desk and chair, two small but plush chairs, and a lamp. The desk had a weird shine to it that Taako couldn't place. No windows, but one floor length mirror sat behind the desk where a window should have been. Too many pieces of framed art lined the wall, all of them bland and without theme.

Kind of a shitty office for a rich guy, but sure. Not everyone had taste.

(He expected someone like Kravitz to have better taste, but a guy can't be good at everything.)

"Alright, so, now that we're alone, what? Are you gonna turn me in?" Taako closed the door. Even if it made him more vulnerable, he was about to do a lot of shouting, and didn't want any sounds carrying around. "I'm immune to blackmail, you know."

Kravitz frowned. "Blackmail? I don't--"

Taako took a step forward. Kravitz was such a pushover, he could probably intimidate his way out of this one. "I could get you fired, my sister has so much dirt on you."

"I'm really not trying to--"

"If you think sticky dick notes are the worst she can do, you've got another thing coming." Taako didn't stop. He figured he could corner Kravitz, both physically and verbally, and end this whole thing before he could go to insurance jail, or however that works.

"I don't mind the extra money," Kravitz blurted out, back against the wall.

Taako stopped. He looked up at Kravitz with a poorly hidden look of confusion. "What?"

"I don't mind the extra money from this little insurance scam of yours." Kravitz took a breath. He gently gestured for Taako to step back, and went to sit in his office chair once he got enough space. "It adds up over time. It's not as small as you might think it is. Almost five hundred dollars in a year."

"Well. Yeah, it's--I wouldn't have, done it if it wasn't..." Taako looked around the office, half-expecting Ashton Kutcher to pop out with a camera screaming about getting Punk'd. "Wait, what's going on here? Right now?"

"I would like to continue this little charade, but you haven't made it sustainable yet." Kravitz collected himself, his official persona coming back, although now Taako knew for a fact it was fake. "We don't know each other, and it could be bad if we get caught."

Taako had to rearrange this whole situation and try to make sense of it. He didn't do it fast enough, so he ended up blubbering like a fish for a couple seconds. "I'm sorry, you--you _want_ to keep doing it?"

"Why not?" His tone would have been innocent if not for the context of the entire conversation.

Barely any reasons surfaced in Taako's mind. It was a good idea to him, that's why he did it in the first place. "It's illegal?" he asked, grasping for straws. Like that was going to stop him. Maybe it'd stop Kravitz, but the fact that he was standing in this office suggested otherwise.

"That's hilarious coming from you," Kravitz said, wearing a too smug smile.

"I'm just saying, you seem like you care about things like rules and laws." He thought back to Candlenights, to Kravitz' face exhaustedly asking them not to goof up next year after thirty-seven minutes of solid yelling.

"I've definitely done a good job of making it seem like that, yes." Kravitz looked down at his whole ensemble. Taako had to admit it was nice, just a little bland. "Would it help if I took off the jacket?" he asked, which was more of a warning than anything else since the jacket was at his elbows by the time he finished his question. He let the jacket lay on the back of his chair, and Taako caught a glimpse of some weird orange spot underneath the armpit of the shirt.

"Fuck, what is that?"

"I, uh, don't know." Kravitz kept the arm held up as he inspected his own armpit. "I got it at Goodwill and haven't been able to get it out. It doesn't smell, and I only wear this shirt with the suit, so I'm not too worried about it."

Taako dropped his arm over the chair. Now that Kravitz showed his hand, this was less of an interrogation and more of a negotiation. Hopefully. "Thought you would be too good for that Salvation Army bullshit."

"I _am_ too good for the Salvation Army, they hate gay people."

"Oh, so I was right." Taako shot a lazy finger gun at Kravitz. "You _are_ gay."

Kravitz blurted out a laugh too hard and caught himself off guard. "I didn't know I was speaking to Sherlock fucking Holmes! You've cracked the case."

"I'm not the one with the accent," Taako said, getting comfortable in the seat. Hooked his legs over the arm of the chair, which was not how normal people sat in chairs, but was anything about this situation normal? Okay. Fine, maybe this wasn't so bad? Kravitz didn't seem like he was going to do anything bad to him, it was probably safe to cut loose.

"I suppose not." Kravitz reached into his desk and pulled out some papers that might have been more insurance forms. "Anyway, no, Taako. I don't have a problem with your plan."

"Oh, so you're a crime boy?" Taako used his foot to kick one of the little office toys on the desk. Had to do something to entertain himself, since Kravitz wasn't hilariously flustered anymore. "Breaking all the laws, here? Kind of hot."

"I only follow rules that make sense." Kravitz reached over to settle the metal balls so they weren't flinging around wildly, instead moving back in forth as intended. "I think private healthcare is a scam, I don't mind taking from that pool."

"A whole five hundred dollaroos, sure." Just to be contrary, he kicked over a cup full of pens. "Bet the insurance company is going to miss that money, huh?"

"Technically it's a thousand dollars, if we're both stealing." With a glare, Kravitz set the pen holder back in place. Had to give the guy credit, he stayed perfectly on topic even with Taako's shenanigans. "Even so, five hundred is a lot. Maybe not to them, but definitely to us."

 _"Us?"_ Taako had to laugh. Was this guy trying to act poor to gain sympathy? He didn't care why Kravitz would want the money, he was just lucky he was here instead of with HR or the police. "Don't you make a buttload of money? What's five hundred dollars to a dude like you?"

"I'm not _that_ high up in the company." He actively ignored Taako's scoffing. "Yes, I know, it might look like it, but I'm in the lowest rung on this floor. I have to do a lot for anyone to take me seriously."

"Yeah? But it's a good job, right?" He had to have made buttloads of money. He could see five hundred dollars being nice to a rich guy, but it's not like he needed it, right?

"It's very hard to break into the higher-ups if you didn't start up there." Kravitz picked at the edge of his desk, wanting to look anywhere but at Taako. "It's a lot easier if you come from the same place they do."

"Like, New York?"

"Like Harvard or Yale, or whatever." Kravitz leaned forward, spoke in a whisper as if anyone would hear them alone in the office. "I went to a community college, but that's just our little secret."

"I mean, _I_ went to Yale," Taako mumbled.

"Lup said the two of you got full academic scholarships." 

"Yeah, but it wasn't even _a thing._ Books are easy."

"Books are certainly not easy," he said, in a tone that wasn't jealous but also wasn't _not_ jealous. "Not all of us are on that level, Taako."

“Doesn’t always have to be about grades, I knew a lot of half-wits at Yale,” Taako said, a little too nonchalant. Kravitz looked like he was about to pop the top of his skull open. Taako couldn’t hold back a smile. “Couldn’t get Mom and Dad to pay for it, huh?”

Kravitz seemed calm on the surface, but the balled up fists on his desk were in danger of busting open all their veins and arteries. “They…could have.”

“Rich family?”

“How do you think I know how to act like a rich person?” Kravitz corrected his voice after it got too loud. He forced his hands to relax. “I…got cut off before I went to college. It’s a long story. We don’t have time for that.”

"Okay, so. Whatever. You don't fit in with the rich kids anymore, that's cool. You're probably a lot less insufferable than I clocked you, nice." He wasn’t saying that to be nice, either. Taako didn’t do that. Maybe they could hang out, or something? If Lup could fuck around with him without doing any pranks to actively harm him, he couldn't be that bad. "You still make double my salary, at least. I know what Lup makes, and you're her superior."

"I don't make _that_ much more than Lup, unfortunately." He gestured to himself, and grimaced at the armpit stain. "And taking on this image is expensive. Especially if I want to do it right, and I do."

"You don't have to." Taako waved his hand in the air dismissively. This guy was so hung up on appearances, he should take a play out of the Taako book: Not giving a fuck. "I'd say fuck 'em. Who cares?"

"I have meetings with _shareholders,_ Taako," he said, serious and impersonal, like this was something he rehearsed. "They care quite a bit. And I have to travel a lot."

"Now, I know _that's_ bullshit, don't you get reimbursed for that?"

"I get reimbursed by the company for flights and meals on work trips, but I don't have a lot of wiggle room in my budget before I get any of the money back." That didn't seem too bad, at least he got the money back. But then Kravitz kept talking, getting more upset as he went. "And also, I don't get reimbursed for suitcases or personal travel items, things I need to be able to be out of the house long term. They don't pay for someone to come feed my cat, or lodge her." Taako tried to cut in to argue, but Kravitz powered through with a passionate frustration. "When I take my car on a trip, they don't pay if I get a flat tire and have to call AAA, and they don’t pay for the membership for that either, or if my axle breaks because I've been driving the same car since _college._ They pay for a valet if I'm staying in a hotel that's valet-only, but they don't tip the valet. And, obviously I'm not a monster, of course I tip them, but since I'm staying in fancy places, it's..."

Taako visibly winced. "Yeesh, that's a big tip."

"Yeah." Kravitz took a breath and calmed down. Sank into his chair. "I don't mind it, I want to make sure they make their goals, but it doesn't leave me a lot." He kicked at his desk. “It's just very expensive to live _like_ I’m rich when I'm not.”

"Seems like a bad deal." If Taako cared about near-strangers' feelings, he'd feel bad for the snide things he said earlier. But his brain was more occupied with the knowledge that the company was shitty in a whole new way. "Thought you were getting the big bucks."

"I am, but not enough to cover work costs." Kravitz gestured vaguely to the weird amount of paintings on the wall. "And I still have to talk to shareholders, so I spend most of my paycheck looking professional. I don't get reimbursed for nice office decorations or suitable work outfits, even if I'm expected to have both of those."

Taako's eyes wandered around the office again, and things made more sense on the second round. He reached to open the little door and found the floor's water heater. The mirror made the whole space look bigger, and the lack of furniture kept the place from seeming crowded and small. Kravitz' desk was made of a veneered, fake wood, but it seemed like he DIY'd it to look a little less fake. Any other decorations on the desk would make the place feel small. He looked under one of the paintings and saw chips in the drywall from when the broom closet shelves were removed. The back of the painting still had part of its Goodwill sticker, half of it peeled off and half of it left on in frustration. The computer was the only genuinely expensive thing in the room, since the company was legally required to supply those to all employees that needed them.

Geez, why was the guy even doing this? Seemed like a sucky deal.

"Why are you even doing this? Seems like a sucky deal."

"It looks really good on a resumé. And it's going to get me promoted at some point, but things are tight right now." The frustration from before left, and now the guy just looked _sad._ "I had to go to a shady instant loan service a few months ago because I couldn't pay rent in time."

"Shit, really?" Taako skimmed over his own memory of taking out a loan there in college so they could start Lup off on some hormones. It took three years and two GoFundMe campaigns to get them out of the red. Totally worth it, but it was more stressful than any academic challenges they faced.

"I was able to pay off the interest and get out of it before it got too big," he said, noticing the fear from Taako. "It just took away my grocery budget, but not a lot that I buy is perishable anyway, so..."

"Are you, uh." Taako leaned forward, being real for a second. "Are you good?"

"I should be, it's alright. Sorry, that was a lot to dump on you that quick." Kravitz took another long minute to collect himself. "I just--uh, this is weird, but, thank you for roping me into your weird insurance scam?"

"Hey, it'll probably work out better if you're in on it." Geez, what was Taako going to do? He couldn't eject out of this now. Yeah, Taako was an asshole, but obviously this dude was just as fucked as him, in a different way, so whatever. He didn't care about rich strangers, but he wasn't enough of an ass to throw someone under the bus because bills were hard. He’d been there, he still dipped into that zone every few months or so. He wouldn’t be doing insurance fraud if he was well off. Guess the same went for Kravitz.

Fuck it. If Taako was going to do insurance fraud, it couldn't hurt to do it right. He grinned at Kravitz. "What were you saying about it not being sustainable? If you've got a better idea, I'm up for it."

Kravitz brightened up, relieved that Taako would give him the time of day after all of that. Not to mention actual crime. "Well, Brad thinks we're married right now, but we don't act married at all," he said, and then backpedaled hard. "I'm not saying we should be--uh-- _friendly_ at work, because we can always claim that we don't like PDA, but we can try and make it a little more believable."

"Like how?"

"I don't know, like, if we see each other in the hall, don't ignore each other?" When Taako stared at him with an expression blanker than a chalkboard soaked in water, Kravitz shrugged. "Say hi to me if you see me in the hall or the break room?"

He couldn't resist letting out a little chuckle. "Pretty high maintenance for a husband."

"Hilarious." Kravitz rolled his eyes, apparently too focused on fraud to have any sort of fun. Boring. "Does your sister know about this?"

"She helped me pick you out as a candidate."

"I can't even pretend to be surprised." That one did get a laugh out of him. Taako wished he knew this guy's sense of humor. Not because he wanted to hear him laugh more, but it'd probably make the scam go smoother. "I could act more like a brother-in-law to her? Since I see her more often than I see you?"

"She'd probably be down with that, yeah." Taako wondered if he'd have to give Lup a cut of his forty dollars for this. Knowing her, she'd just want to be paid back in favors or emotional honesty. "Barry, too, our family is kind of, uhh...it's all one big thing."

"Good to know." Kravitz sat back in his chair, mulling some things over. Geez, he took this all so _seriously,_ when they've already been doing nothing for two months and hadn't got caught. "I can also just casually mention you as my husband every once in a while?"

Taako snorted. "That sounds fake."

"No, like--" Kravitz sputtered a bit as he tried to construct a point. "If someone's talking to you about an instrument they play, you could say, 'oh, my husband plays the cello,' or something."

Oh shit, that was actually kind of hot. "Do you actually play cello?"

"I do. I also have a sommelier license because of a dare, and I go out LARPing every other month, which is something we can get into later," Kravitz said that last one a little too fast for Taako to really dissect it, but _oh boy,_ did he intend on coming back to that. "What do you do, other than work?"

Nothing super impressive came to mind. Not that he wanted to impress Kravitz, hell no. Just, if Kravitz was planning to bring him up in casual conversation, he wanted to sound interesting. Kravitz watched him expectantly, and Taako gave up trying to sound cool and just rattled off some basic shit. "Used to be a chef, uhh, I like fishing, surfing..."

"Really," he said, tone dull but face enraptured.

"Really!" Taako kicked the desk. Tried his best to get the guy _engaged_ in the conversation. Taako wasn't going to pretend to be married to a board. "Dude, if you can just casually drop that you're a LARPer, I should be able to ride a few waves."

"That's fair." That cracked a smile out of the guy, finally. And then he went back to business. Fuck his one track mind. He reached into his desk and found a scrap piece of paper, clicked his pen a couple times. "How did we meet?"

"Huh?"

"If someone asks you how we met, what would you say to them?"

"Uh, I don't know?" Taako could come up with some wild shit on the spot, but believable shit? No, that took extra brainpower. No thank you. Who authorized that? "My sister introduced us? She works in your department."

"That could work." Holy shit, Kravitz was actually _writing this down._ "We can probably get away with saying we're newlyweds, because the insurance just rolled over, but how long were we engaged? How long did we date before then?"

"You're a details man, huh?" Okay. Fine. If he could take this seriously, Taako could too. He reached deep down into his own--nah, nope, bullshit. No need for self reflection here, the only reason he'd do that is if Lup cornered him into it. But he at least knew he wouldn't marry some rando. "I wouldn't marry anyone without having at least five years with 'em."

"Lup's only been working in my department for six years..." Kravitz took a significantly less amount of time to come up with something plausible, and if Taako had any insecurities about that, he would take a moment to feel ashamed. "What if she worked with me for a year, set us up, and then I proposed to you and we decided to do a quiet ceremony with family?"

Taako grinned. "Hotshot, proposing to _me."_

"You seem like the type of person who likes being wooed," he said with another lovely crack in the business facade. But like every other time, this one went away immediately. Man on a mission. "And I can imagine that I hesitated to ask you, since you needed so much time, but afterwards, you were like, 'what took you so long?'"

"--and then I was like, 'let's just do this now, I'm tired of waiting!'"

Kravitz’ eyes brightened up, happy to establish a good rhythm. "So we went to the courthouse?"

"No, uh, Vegas, because, that's where all the shotgun weddings happen, right?" He threw a wink over to Kravitz. "I'd want the full experience, you know?"

"Just for the weekend?" Kravitz’ pen stilled on the paper. "I haven't taken vacation time in a while, and certainly not at the same time as you."

"We had the, uh, the fourth off? That long weekend, we could'a just flown out." Taako made a mental note to ask Lup to take down all her photos of him from the fireworks party Magnus threw a few months back. He wasn’t worried anyone would notice, but Kravitz was strung up enough on details to care.

"That's...not bad at all." He put the pen back in its proper place and folded the paper in half. "We can work out some more details later, but I think that's a good start on not getting caught on the little things."

Taako shot out of his seat. Meeting over. Big success. Time to go home and sleep until he was almost late for work. "Well, shit, if it's just little things, this is gonna be a cakewalk."

"If it was just the little things, I'm sure..." Kravitz stuck the notes into his pocket, his actions all in slow motion. Looked like there was some bad news on the horizon. "There's also...uh, some bigger things."

"Ah, shit, this is gonna get messy, isn't it?"

"A little bit." At least Kravitz had the decency to look guilty when delivering bad news. Taako would never have the foresight to do that. "My boss congratulated me yesterday, and then scolded me for running out on a secret wedding." 

Uh oh. If Kravitz was so high up, then… "When you say _your boss,_ do you mean--"

"One of the major shareholders of the company, yeah. She's in the office next door." Kravitz nudged his head in that direction. _Some chick named Raven. Fuck._ "She's not here very often, so you probably won't see her, but. Uh." Kravitz slid his jacket back on, as if his work persona could shield him from a difficult conversation. "There's one thing."

"Hoo boy."

"The company Candlenights party--not the office one, but the fancy one, for corporate?" He paused and waited for Taako to nod. "She wants you to be my plus one. So she can meet you."

"The _fancy_ Candlenights party?" Taako would collapse back in his seat if he wasn’t frozen in shock. "You mean, the one where they all fly you out to some swanky--fuckin' remote destination while the rest of us bum around with plastic cups out in the break room?"

"Yes, the very same." Despite his anxiety, Kravitz flashed a smile. "They're shipping us out to Hawai'i this year."

"Wait, but you didn't go last year,” Taako said, as if rationalizing Kravitz out of the situation could prevent any of this. "You yelled at me and the boner squad last year."

"I had, um, a very embarrassing performance review." He refused to look Taako in the eye as he admitted it. All of Taako’s reviews were disasters, but he still couldn’t fathom what an _embarrassing_ review would look like. "I decided to stay here and keep an eye on things to get my reputation back up. You actually helped a lot, putting someone in line really got me back in my boss' good graces."

"Uh, you're welcome? I guess? No skin off my nose." The spark and chaos from earlier disappeared, and only a big block of awkward air sat between them now. Taako could only jabber on to fill the silence. "So you want me to come on this big, fancy vacation?"

"If you want to keep up this charade." Kravitz opened his hands out, a friendly escape route. "If that's too much, that's fine, I won't rat you out. I just think if we're going to do this, we should do it right."

"Hell no! You think I'm going to turn down a free vacation to Hawai'i?" Sure, it could be awkward, but he wouldn’t be Taako if he turned down free shit. Especially free shit with a price tag of a few thousand big ones. "Put a ring on me and sign me the fuck up for that."

"I thought you would be more reluctant."

"What part of _free vacation_ do you not understand?"

"We'll have to act like a couple for a whole week." Finally, Kravitz stood to meet Taako’s eye, his gaze more serious than ever. Intense, but not in a way that Taako was emotionally available for. "And not just in passing. We'll probably share the same room, and bed, and we'll have most of our meals together."

"That's a while out, we'll workshop the act." Taako crossed his arms and gave Kravitz a thorough once-over. Good thing he picked someone that he could conceivably be married to, it made things more believable. "Besides, you're pretty to look at, it's not a tough deal."

"It's not, huh?" he asked, with a bit of a cocky smile. He put his suit jacket back on in one swift move and rounded the desk to walk Taako out.

"I have eyes." Taako watched him as he moved closer, and didn’t step out of the way to let him near the door.

Kravitz stepped into his personal space. Didn’t crowd Taako so much that he couldn’t run away, but did lean his shoulder against the wall next to him. "Then maybe you should use them to dress yourself better."

Too stubborn to move, Taako only flashed a smile. "Has anyone ever told you you're an asshole?"

"Many times." They both stood there, too afraid or too reluctant to move out of position. Kravitz’ eyes scanned Taako’s face, lingering on the bottom half for a fraction of a second too long. Dude could look smooth when he wasn’t trying to be all professional, Taako could give him that. When Kravitz’ voice came back, it was lower and a little less accented. "I thi--"

The door latched open. Both Taako and Kravitz’ heads snapped to the sound, taken out of…whatever that moment was supposed to be. Probably just getting into character for later.

It really wasn’t important.

Taako didn’t realize how old the door was until its awful creaking sound echoed through the tiny broom closet shaped room. A too-friendly face peeked out from the crack in the door until the crack was large enough to show the head of HR coming to snoop in their business. By an instinct held over from the heist two months ago, Taako ducked behind Kravitz’ desk like it was a barricade in a warzone.

"Heeey," Brad said, like a suburban mother stepping in on their moody teenage kid alone in their room.

"Brad! Hello!" Kravitz’ voice cracked like a kid caught looking through an older sibling’s porn collection.

Brad opened the door further, his smile too fake and wide. "I thought I'd find you locked in here. Still trying to get some work done?" 

"Um. Uh." Kravitz’ eye flicked over to Taako, still hidden behind the desk. "Sort of."

"You know you're not supposed to be in here off the clock, friend." Brad opened his arms. Too fucking energetic for the time of day. "It's trivia night!"

Kravitz nodded too fast and too…sweaty. "Oh, I know, I just wanted to come in here and grab--"

"Found it!" Taako popped up from behind the desk. Fuck it. If they were doing this act, they had to start sometime. He grabbed some random thing off Kravitz’ desk and held it out to his fake husband. "Here you go, _babe."_

To his credit, Kravitz only hesitated a second before relaxing and reaching to take it. "Ah, there it is, thank you." 

Brad took a moment to drink the whole situation in. Then, he pointed to the object Kravitz apparently couldn’t leave work without. "That's a stapler."

"It's broken, I wanted to try and fix it at home,” Kravitz said, and Taako had to give him credit for his improv skills. "No use in getting another one if this one's just got a couple screws loose, right?"

"That's very sustainable, great job!" Brad clasped his hands together. Taako couldn’t place why, but it just felt condescending. "But, you know, you don't have to lie to me about spending time with your husband. Just, please, don't do anything scandalous in here, gotcha?"

If Kravitz’ face could get any darker, it would. "We weren't--"

"Not only is that unhygienic, but it's not very healthy for your home life,” Brad continued, somehow still smiling through this weird sex ed talk with his adult coworkers?

"Don't argue with him, he's got an idea in his head and he'll keep it in there." Taako let out a groan and stood to his full office worker height.

"Got it.” Kravitz set the stapler back on the desk and motioned to wave Brad out of his office. “Thanks, Brad."

"And I hope there isn't a next time, but you know company policy states you have to tell us when you're dating a coworker, right?" The door was all the way open now, Brad firmly rooted in the office. "I'm not going to punish you, since you're in different departments and you're married now, but please keep that in mind."

Taako didn’t even try to hold back from rolling his eyes. "Wow, I thought you weren't supposed to be working on trivia night."

"You've got me there!" Brad put up his hands in the air like Taako and Kravitz planned to rob him (And they were. Or. They were robbing the insurance company. Six of one, half a dozen of another). He opened the door further and gestured for Taako and Kravitz to follow him. "Why don't we all go back together, huh?"

"Not even letting us sneak in a quick one?" Taako asked, prodding a stiff elbow into Kravitz’ side.

"Please don't push it, Taako." Kravitz placed a hand on the small of his back and gently led him to the door. "Dear."

Brad smiled, enamored by their unpracticed and clumsy attempts at marriage. Hopefully he wrote off any gaps as awkward newlywed behavior."By the way, why wasn't I invited to the wedding?"

Kravitz lit up. "Oh, well, that's actually a funny story. See, when I proposed to Taako..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3c oh, we're really in it now, ladies, gents, and those who know better
> 
> happy new year!!! oh no it's the future


	4. Improv Exercises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako and Kravitz test out their act in front of others for the first time.

Kravitz had the sense to link his arm with Taako’s on the way back down to trivia. He did most of the talking to Brad, which was great because Taako did _not_ want to interact with that schmuck. He listened to the conversation just enough to make sure Kravitz wasn’t fucking up any details, but the guy was too thorough. There wasn’t much to worry about. Brad pushed them out of the elevator and told them to go have fun with everyone else.

Pssh. As _if._ Taako had a date with some night cereal, and he wasn’t gonna miss that for some dumbass trivia.

Except Kravitz kept a grip tighter than his grocery budget.

Taako tugged his arm, trying to shake it loose from Kravitz’ with little success. “’Scuse me, man, there’s a divot in my couch with my ass’ name on it, so…”

“You don’t think it’s suspicious for us to leave at separate times?” With a too-wide smile, Kravitz kept a tight hold on Taako’s arm. “We’ve only been married for a few months, we’re still in the honeymoon phase.”

“Ugh, you’re so _responsible,”_ Taako whined, only half joking. Maybe twenty-five percent.

“You act like insurance fraud is easy.” Kravitz loosened his grip, confident Taako wouldn’t cut and run. Now that he wasn’t holding Taako back, the contact could have been comforting. “You named your ass? I’m guessing it’s _Taaquito.”_

“I was messing with you.” He frowned. “And it’s obviously _Taako Supreme.”_

“I know. Just trying to lighten the mood.” With an unfairly handsome smile, Kravitz reached to tuck some hair behind Taako’s ear. “Thought it would be a good idea to get you smiling again since we’re being watched.”

Okay, maybe that contact _was_ comforting, but Taako wasn’t about to stand there goo-goo eyed about it. Or, if he was, it was just for the act, of course. “We are?”

“Over there.” He gestured to an all too-familiar pack of assholes and weirdoes huddled by the coffee machine, who all coincidentally had their eyes in different places as soon as Kravitz’ finger pointed their way. “Those are your friends, right?”

Taako shot a glare at the group. Their piss-poor attempts at causality didn’t fool him, he could see Magnus and Merle watch him from the corners of their eyes. At least some of the others had the decency to pretend they weren’t staring. “Coworkers, don’t get it twisted.”

“Should…you introduce them to me?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to meet my husband’s friends.” He paused before his face broke off into a weirdly fond grin. “That’s you.”

“I know!” Fuck, he’d have to up his game. Taako hated getting looked down on, even by a guy with a face like that. He tugged Kravitz to his crowd of so-called “friends” and tried not to look so unnatural. “Ugh, fine, c’mon.”

He dragged Kravitz over to the gross open concept break room (what was the point of a break room if you can still see people working twenty feet away?) where the TaakoSquad™ decided to hunker down in before trivia. Once Taako acknowledged their presence, the group dropped all attempts to hide their staring. No need to be polite around Taako, no way (maybe that was fair, he didn’t give them the same luxury). This wasn’t the full gang, though. Just the ones that Taako was unlucky enough to work with.

Magnus and Merle worked near his cubicle, obviously. He actually didn’t know Carey and Killian too well. Those were Magnus’ friends, but they were fine. Most people thought they’d get along well enough because of wlw and mlm solidarity, but Carey was a little freaked out by Taako’s pocket drawer and Killian was smart enough to know that Taako was full of shit. Ren actually respected Taako, so he respected her back. And there was the weird intern kid whose name always escaped Taako, but was sure started with an A.

Agnes (Arthur?) at least had the tact to pretend like Kravitz wasn’t the only thing he was focused on, and waved as they approached. "I thought you were leaving, sir!"

"No, got caught up in something." After a moment of silence, everyone’s stares went from curious to aggressive, so there was no point in hiding it any longer. "Oh, right, this is my husband. Did I tell you that?"

"Your--" Merle gawked like a fucking cartoon. Taako could swear his eyes popped out from his glasses. _“Husband?”_

“You know they let gay people get married now, old man,” he said, hoping if he was dismissive enough people would stop asking about it. But of course they didn’t. You can’t just hide a whole husband.

“Well, well, mazel fuckin’ tov,” Killian said, deadpan, clapping once and then twice like she was going to start a slow clap, but fell off before the third came due.

The rest of the group didn’t take it so jovially. Everyone stammered out half words, unable to get a full sentence out, until Carey finally got a coherent thought together. "When did you get _married?"_

“Forget that, when were you _dating?”_ Arnold-or-whatever asked.

“No, I think the better question is when they got married, I don’t--” Magnus seemed on the verge of an existential crisis. “This is a joke, right?”

“It’s not a joke,” Kravitz assured him. Nobody was swayed.

Ren gave Kravitz a once-over. “I mean, he’s not my type, but good job.”

Merle shrugged. “I’d fuck him.”

“You would _not,_ if I had anything to say about it.” At least Kravitz had taste and sense.

Carey _hmmed_ and assessed the situation. “Is it a no because he looks like Danny DeVito, or is it because he just perpetually smells like weed?”

“It’s just lawn clippings,” Merle said with a wink right as Magnus whined, “guys, I think we’re missing the point, and that’s that _Taako is married?_ And we still don’t know since _when???”_

“More like the devil’s lawn clippings, if you know what I--” Ren started to say, only stopped by Magnus’ puppy dog eyes. “Okay. Fine, I’ll bite. When did you get married?”

"Like, couple weeks ago?" Taako put on his best innocent face and cocked his head towards Kravitz. "When did we get married, again?"

"July 5th? That was almost three months ago," he said, and had the common sense to act defeated when Taako didn’t show any sort of recognition. "Taako, please tell me you'll remember our anniversary."

Taako couldn’t help but laugh. "No promises."

“I was at town hall that day, I can’t believe I didn’t run into you!” Carey punched Taako in the shoulder, harder than what would ever be warranted. Taako made a note to put pudding in her desk. Not even the good kind.

Killian scrunched her face up at Carey. “Why were you at town hall? I don’t remember that.”

“Illegal reasons,” she whispered, and then brought a finger to her lips. Killian shrugged this off like this was business as usual (to her credit, it was).

“We didn’t go to town hall, we were just at the wedding, y’know.”

“Well, we went to a different town hall, for the certificate,” Kravitz corrected, his hold on Taako’s arm tightening.

Taako half-whispered up to Kravitz, not enough for the rest of the boner squad to hear, but this was goddamn _code red_ two minutes into the ruse. “We didn’t go the day before?”

If Kravitz didn’t have a death grip on his arm, Taako would assume he was calm. “Federal holiday, remember?”

 _“Fuck,_ yeah, uh, that was a blur.” He laughed, mostly out of desperation. “Happiest day of my life and all smarts just go right out the window, huh?”

“If you had any to begin with,” Kravitz huffed under his breath. All of Taako’s totally-not-friends-just-coworkers snapped their heads to Kravitz. Now he was under more pressure than a raw egg at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Right, his coworkers were _dumbasses,_ but they were also _protective_ dumbasses. Great.

“Don’t worry about it, he’s strung up,” Taako said, as calmly as possible. It was like soothing a pack of wild boards with this crew. “What do they talk about in that fancy anger management class? It’s like, counting down from sixty-nine, right?”

“It’s…ten,” he answered, still stiff and nervous.

Killian wasn’t impressed. “Are you two…good?”

“Yes, um…I’m sorry.” Kravitz forced himself to loosen up, which looked just as difficult as untangling a rubber band ball. “It’s been a rough night.”

Maybe Kravitz wasn’t good with recovery and improv, but Taako knew his strong suits. And maybe he wasn’t great with improv either, but he sure was great at dropping the most cursed sentences imaginable into the middle of a casual conversation like it was a normal conversation topic. “Brad caught us fucking in his office.”

 _That_ turned some heads.

It didn’t help to calm Kravitz down any. He sputtered and held Taako’s arm tight enough to give him a blood pressure measurement. “We weren’t _fucking in the office!”_

Taako winked. “Of course we weren’t, Brad caught us and stopped it.”

 _“Taako,”_ he said, so broken it sounded like his vocal cords were disintegrated at the molecular level. He hid his face in the top of Taako’s head, completely defeated. Bingo.

Acting embarrassed was never as good as actually being embarrassed, and that sold the act to the crowd again. They all seemed to forget the hiccup from a moment before, laughing at this embarrassing little display instead. Everything back to normal. Maybe more than normal. Maybe it was so loud it attracted--

“What’s all the fuss about over here?”

Unwanted attention.

Even though they were married for much longer than Taako and Kravitz were pretending to be, Lup still had Barry on her arm like they were newlyweds. Taako knew the both of them had a big project, probably pressured by Kravitz to get it done in time, so they both looked too tired to be there. Not tired enough to watch Taako with a look that was too smug for their own good. 

Taako loved seeing his sister most of the time.

This was not one of those times.

“Lup!” Magnus pushed himself to the front of their little crowd. "Did you know about--this?" Magnus asked, hands gesturing at Kravitz wildly.

For a fraction of a second, Lup had a glint in her eyes that said, “I’m going to ruin this man’s whole career.” Instead, she said, "of course. Dude asked for my blessing and everything,” with a smile and a nod. 

“July 5th, right?” Barry asked, and Taako suddenly flashed back to the moment where Barry and Lup talked about bugging their boss’ office so they knew when they could slack off. Did he hear that whole conversation? _Did he really need to listen in on Kravitz’ office during trivia?_

“That’s…” Kravitz looked to Taako with a deeply unsettled look. “Yes, that was it. I’m glad _someone_ remembered, at least.”

Taako shrugged. “I’m not good with numbers.”

“You majored in math,” Lup said, her face twisted up in the closest human approximation of a raisin.

“Yeah, and it was BS.” Taako mustered up a sparkling and charming smile (which he was perfectly capable of, _Lup)._ “A bachelor of science.”

“I won’t take it personally. I’m pretty sure he’d forget your birthday if it wasn’t on the same day as his.” Kravitz grinned, and Lup laughed like this was the funniest joke she heard in a year.

“Aw, c’mon, honey, you’re making me look _stupid,”_ he said, and punctuated it with an invisible but searing pinch to Kravitz’ shoulder. Taako reveled in the way Kravitz had to pucker his lips and hold in a yelp.

Barry’s glasses shined like an anime villain about to monologue about their master plan. “Don’t pinch his ass in front of us, Taako, that’s gross.”

“I--he wasn’t--” Kravitz dropped his protests after a hot second and opted to bury his face in his hands, awkwardly bringing Taako closer to him. “There’s nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise, is there?”

Lup winked. “Not a single thing.”

Argo sidled up next to Kravitz, inspecting the both of them like he was some kind of detective. Yeah, right. This kid got coffee all day, he wasn’t anything special. He pointed to Kravitz’ hands. "You're not wearing your ring?"

Okay, fine, that was actually a good point, but thankfully it didn’t seem to fluster Kravitz. Or at least, it didn’t fluster him anymore than what Taako or Barry or Lup could accuse him of.

"The jeweler accidentally switched our orders with another couple, so our rings came back in completely wrong sizes." He took a deep breath to shake off his previous embarrassments and held up his empty hand. "They're redoing them for free, of course, but we don't have backups."

Taako poked him in the side. "It means we get to be swingers for a couple more weeks."

"It does _not,"_ Kravitz said, unable to hold back a chuckle.

Alan didn’t seem pleased. "You didn't just use your engagement rings?"

"Ah, I didn't propose with a ring."

"They say millennials are killing the engagement ring industry, didn't you hear?" Taako smushed his cheek into Kravitz’ shoulder, talking on about this like it was normal. This lie, at least, felt pretty natural. "Anyway, diamonds aren't that rare, it's not, like, impressive to have an engagement ring."

“And we flew out to Vegas hours after I proposed.”

“You didn’t even bring Lup with you?” Figures a nosy intern would turn a casual conversation into a whole interrogation.

“We FaceTimed in.” Lup could be benevolent _sometimes._ At least when there was a huge chance that her brother could go to tax jail. “I wasn’t gonna miss my brother’s wedding, are you kidding?”

“You went to _Vegas_ and didn’t even invite us?” Merle gawked. Every expression he ever made looked fake, but Taako knew from experience it was as real as pink salmon (which is pink in the wild, but farmed salmon has to be dyed pink because of their poor diets)(so, sometimes real, but not real enough to expect it on the regular).

“People complain about getting invited to destination weddings anyway, you know.” Taako huffed, already done with this conversation. Was lying always this hard? “Not worth the trouble.”

Merle whined. “But I’ve got a _buddy_ in Vegas--”

“We’ll have a good vow renewal in a few years, don’t be so pissy.” Taako saw Azalea open his mouth, and lifted a finger to stop him like a little cartoon kid from the Netherlands plugging a hole in a dam. “Kid, are you done interrogating my husband?”

“I just wanted to make sure this isn’t some weird human trafficking thing, sir,” Amadeus said, adjusting his glasses like the nerd he was. He seemed satisfied, though. “Do you know how people get recruited into cults? Because this is how people get into cults.”

“We didn’t get married on a remote fuckin’ hill in some commune where everyone’s wearing white and talkin’ about their charismatic leader or whatever! We did it the old fashioned way.”

Ren snorted. “Which is?”

“Having a drunk Elvis getting your names wrong during the ceremony, of course,” Kravitz said, flashing his teeth in a way too charming grin. That shit could be weaponized.

“You had a drunk Elvis?” Merle waggled his finger at Kravitz. “Is he still around? I knew it.”

Taako shooed him away like a field mouse. “He meant an Elvis impersonator, you old co--”

“I guess the mystery continues.” Kravitz laughed, actually _endeared_ to Merle’s bullshit, somehow. What the fuck. “It was entertaining, but I am looking forward to when we want to do an actual ceremony.”

“When we have an extra twenty thousand dollars lying around, sure, go right ahead.”

Another cute little bubble of laughter. “With your tastes? Try fifty thousand dollars.”

"You didn't even tell us you were dating, what the hell?" Eugh, Magnus was still on the case? He wasn’t even enough of a smartass to play detective most of the time.

Taako waved him off. Dude was probably just offended he didn’t get to hear about all the mushy details. What a gross romantic mess. Taako’s love life was _not_ Magnus’ business. Especially not his fake love life. “Again--he’s not much of a secret boyfriend if everyone knows about him.”

“I was worried our relationship would affect Taako's job, and I wanted to make sure his position was protected." Kravitz looped his arm out of Taako’s and went to hold his hand instead. Somehow, this felt even more scandalous. “It would be nice to meet each other’s friends, but we didn’t know if you could keep a secret.”

“Oh, we definitely can’t keep secrets,” Merle said, and then winked at Barry for no discernible reason.

Carey hummed, looking between the couple. "I don't think that would have mattered, don't you work in different departments?"

"He's a worrywart, haven't you met him?" Taako reached up to pinch his cheek. "I told him that for years."

"Wait, years? I thought this was some ninety day fiancé thing, for TV?" Magnus held up a couple fingers, stared down at them as if they held some big secret to the universe. "So when you yelled at him during Candlenights last year--"

Kravitz smiled. "I don't play favorites."

"I thought it was hot,” Taako said, and shrugged.

Merle snapped his fingers. "I _knew_ you looked a little horny for no reason."

“Wait, wait, hold on. You were in Vegas on…the fifth?” Magnus reset his fingers and counted days instead. “Hold on, you came to Julia’s fireworks show.”

“And we went on a plane the day after and fucked off to Vegas, you know that’s my style.”

“Hol--”

“If you say _hold on_ one more time, my pudding drawer is going to become _your_ pudding drawer.” Taako pointed at him accusingly, paused for dramatic effect, the whole nine yards. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Magnus relaxed, although it wasn't clear whether it was because he didn't want to get pudding'd or if he actually believed in the act. “You still should have brought your secret boyfriend!”

“Well, he wouldn’t be much of a secret if I did, would he?”

Kravitz held up his other hand, placating. “We weren’t trying to hide the wedding from you, it was spontaneous.”

“Used up all your frequent flier miles to get it done.”

“It was worth it.” Kravitz laughed and scrunched up his nose. Squeezed Taako’s hand for good measure. “Don’t look at me like that, you told me not to kiss you at work.”

Taako grimaced. “I’m not looking at you like anything.”

“If you say so.” Kravitz had no right to look that fond. It went a long way to sell the act, but at what cost?

“Oh, you could do one right now,” Lup said, and was it possible to disown a sibling? Asking for a friend.

“You know he’s shy.” Taako wasn’t going to fall for her games. He laughed it off and slung his arm around Kravitz’ waist. No awkward side hugs with his _totally real_ husband. “Dude still asks to kiss me when we’re in _private.”_

Kravitz actually looked a little horrified. “That’s just consent, Taako.”

“If we’re married, you don’t have to ask every damn time!”

“I do, actually. Even if you’re going to say yes every time, it makes me feel better.” This motherfucker actually had the gall to bring Taako’s hand to his mouth and kiss it. What was this, the dark ages?

“You in the dark ages, honey?”

“You’ve seen my aesthetic, is that even a question?”

“Okay, can we go back to when they were _secretly_ dating?” Killian rolled her eyes, completely disinterested now. “This is gross.”

“Aww, they’re actually kind of cute.” Magnus watched the both of them like they were two characters in some bad romance show. “I can get behind this.”

“Yeah, yeah, are you all done interrogating my husband? I’ll bring him over when he isn’t busy, okay? You can grill him then.” Was Taako planning on making excuses for Kravitz forever? Yes. Did Magnus need to know that? No. He could figure this all out when Kravitz got married to some other asshole for real.

“Fair enough!” Magnus got out his phone and struggled to navigate his contact list with his huge bumbling fingers. “I’m going to call Julia and see if she wants to go on a double date!”

Taako zoned out of the conversation past that, since it wasn’t really about him or his weird scam. He didn’t need to have physical contact with Kravitz the whole time either, so this was good practice for the both of them in a casual setting. Any weirdness was hastily waved away by Lup teasing them about adjusting to going public.

Eventually, trivia replaced Jackbox on the big projector screen, and most little conversations fizzled out. Taako usually bolted long before trivia started, but Kravitz kept him out late. Even Lup and Barry left before him. Taako went to gather his stuff together. No need to stay any longer when there weren’t any eyes on him and his fake husband. His movements were automatic, his brain tired from extended human interaction. Maybe he’d take a sick day tomorrow. This was a bunch of shit all at once.

“That was good acting at the end there.” Kravitz bumped Taako’s shoulder with his own. Something about it woke Taako up out of his stupor. “That little dumbstruck look was cute, have you ever considered community theater?”

“Sure, sure…” Whatever he was talking about, it didn’t matter. The only good thing was that they passed the friends test. Taako was ready to fucking hit the hay, lying took too much energy. "We should leave at the same time."

"Right! Right, um." Kravitz still acted flustered. Had to hand it to him, he was dedicated to the act. He wouldn’t have to worry about that in a minute. "Are you ready to go now?"

"Sure, need to feed the cat,” Taako said, loud enough for a couple passerby to hear.

Kravitz blinked at him, dazed, and whispered, "you have a cat too?"

Taako whispered back, forcing himself not to yell in frustration at how dense this man was. "No, _you told me you have a cat!"_

"Oh! I did, I--fuck, this is weird." Finally letting go of his grip on at least one (1) of Taako’s body parts, Kravitz moved to pick up his bag under an unused desk. He must have stashed it before his little meeting with Taako. "We should get home."

Even though it was freeing to be separate from Kravitz, Taako went ahead and looped his arm in his on the way out again. No reason to act distant, they were in the honeymoon phase, in theory. Carey whistled at them on the way out, because she was awful. Taako could only hope that Brad saw them leave together, or else this would all be for nothing.

There weren’t any stars outside because of light pollution, and the clouds were too thick to see the moon. Although, it must have been a full moon with all of the weird bullshit going on. Nothing normal would lead Taako to this set of decisions. Kravitz let go of Taako’s arm and fished his keys out of his bag. The headlights flashed on, duller than most cars on the street. Even though the little black sedan looked cared for, it was still old enough to vote. The lights on the car’s dashboard outlined the fraying fibers of Kravitz’ suit jacket, the only thing betraying how used and old it was. Kravitz removed his suit jacket and threw it in the backseat, his stain out in plain sight.

“This bad boy can fit so many bad financial decisions.” Taako slapped the roof of the car. “Well, this is you.”

“This is me,” he said, chuckling. He sat his bag down in the passenger’s seat, but paused before sitting down. "How are you getting home?"

"Uh, just the bus." Taako reached into his pocket and produced his bus pass.

"I can drive you." Kravitz flung his bag into the backseat "I won't do anything creepy, if you rather I not know where you live, I can drop you off at, like, a convenience store near your place."

"You know, I think I'll take you up on that." Maybe he shouldn’t have been so hastily convinced to get into a near-stranger’s car in the dark, but fuck it. If Kravitz was planning on killing his fake husband, better get it over with quick. Taako rounded the car and slipped right into the passenger’s seat. He whipped out his cracked phone and turned on his data. "There's a CVS near my house, let me Google the address."

Kravitz leaned in close enough so that his hair brushed up against Taako’s temple a bit. It was buzzed when he saw him a few months ago, but already starting to grow back. He watched Taako’s phone with a little too much curiosity.

“I know,” Taako said, hoping he didn’t have to explain it all, “it’s cracked to shit.”

“Oh, no, I’m just looking at the address, I’m not judging you.” Kravitz took his phone out of his pocket, which was a Blackberry that didn’t _look_ ten years old, but was close. “I would have a cracked screen if I ever upgraded.”

“You’re a mess!” Taako laughed as he punched in the address.

"Ah, my place is further out, it's on my way home." Kravitz pointed to the screen, his glasses knocking against Taako’s head as he leaned in further. "Do you want me to pick you up in the mornings? It could make this all look more believable."

"Hey, saves me about forty minutes." Taako went ahead and set up directions to the CVS, since it didn’t seem like Kravitz’ phone had that kind of capacity. "D'you think you could pick up Lup and Barry, too? They're my neighbors."

"Of course, it would be weird not to." Kravitz turned on his brights and put the car in reverse. "Gives us some time to get all our stories in line."

"You can tell me about that sommelier license you got on a dare."

He laughed, already out of the parking lot before the robotic voice could start nagging them about directions. “Oh, it’s actually expired now, but it’s still a good story.”

“Expired?” Taako put on his most wicked grin and dropped his phone into one of the spare cup holders. “I dare you to go get it renewed, then, how’s that?”

“Well,” he said with a sparkle in his eye that spelled trouble for Taako, “we’ll see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy friday to everyone! i'm glad everyone's having fun with this fic. I am, too! 
> 
> oh, and i should go ahead and put out this warning for next chapter: if you've read my fics before, you know that sometimes they talk about sex. don't worry (or sorry to disappoint, depending on your preferences), nothing happens on screen ever! but i just want to put that blanket warning out starting next chapter in case you need it :)


	5. Bonding Exercises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako and Kravitz polish the act.

It was Kravitz' idea to hang out after work a few times so they could get to know each other. Get their stories synced up. Figure out how they would act around the office.

It was Taako's idea to take him to a wine and pottery place to get drunk off rosé together.

Kravitz didn't seem to object to that.

They came on a couple’s night by complete accident, but that turned out to be in their favor. Carey and Killian walked in a few minutes after Taako and Kravitz set up their station. It was a good low-stakes way to practice their act; it wasn’t like the girls would listen to every word they said, and any awkward exchanges could be written off as date nerves. Do married couples have date nerves? Doesn’t matter. Carey and Killian wanted to have a wheel farther away to enjoy their anniversary alone, but stopped by every once in a while to chat with and/or tease them. Mostly to tease.

For Kravitz’ part, he was pretty nice to hang with. He had to stay close and in character in case Carey and Killian looked over, but never did anything creepy. Low bar, sure, but it was still appreciated. Nothing ruins a perfect face like Kravitz’ as much as a shitty personality. Taako had no fucking idea how he wasn’t already taken, looking like that. His jokes weren’t always funny, but Taako laughed at most of them for the performance. He laughed more at how awful Kravitz’ vase shaped up to be. A little bit of _Ghost_ can only go such a long way with fixing a mess like that. It looked like a tribute to the leaning tower of Pisa, except without the millions of dollars it took to keep that thing from falling on top of shitty tourists.

“It’s part of the _charm_ , I think,” he said, “and I’m on my fourth glass, so you know that--that’s probably a factor.”

“I dunno, I’m on my fifth and look at _this_ masterpiece.” Taako took his bowl off the wheel and held it up. The instructor yelled at him for making a bowl, but _fuck_ them, it looked great. Can’t contain perfection.

Kravitz stared at the bowl in shock. Or, at least, in Taako’s general area, dude was too drunk to sit still. He could have been looking at Taako’s face, for all he knew. “That’s a masterpiece, all right.”

Most importantly, he was uncannily easy to talk to, which made the acting come naturally.

By the time they fired their bowl and vase, the two of them were absolutely gone. Taako wasn’t one to get smashed often, but the wine was cheap and Kravitz was paying for it. Taako made a note to the sober version of himself to pay him back for some of that. He normally wouldn’t do that but Kravitz actually needed the help. If he starved, Taako wouldn’t be able to collect his forty dollars.

Obviously the most important part of this equation.

The two said their goodbyes to Carey and Killian, who told them not to have _“too much fun,”_ (watching Kravitz balk at that one was a delight) and ran off for the busses with their subpar vases. Kravitz stumbled aside when they were out of view to give Taako his space back, even considerate while drunk. What the hell. Who gave him the _right._

Taako was planning on walking home, but if Kravitz was going to take an Uber, he wanted to…fuck, wait for him? Make sure he didn’t get murdered by his driver? Kravitz booked it through the parking lot, headed for the edges. There were still a bunch of crowds from the Trader Joe’s in the shopping complex, and Kravitz watched the rows of cars with a hazy confusion.

"Thanks for the time, that was--I mean, you're--funny, you're very funny when you're not vandalizing company property." Kravitz tripped on every step. Dude must not have drank very often if that got him _this_ far gone. His voice slurred in ways that Taako didn’t know a British accent could slur. If he didn’t know better, Taako would swear his accent was less thick while drunk. "I, uh--I haven't had that much fun in a long--in a while."

Fine, fuck it, Taako was a babysitter right now. He walked with Kravitz, entertained by how his entire professional façade blurred away. "When's the last time you had a day off?"

Kravitz tripped over a pebble. A _pebble._ "I take vacations _,_ I have paid vacations."

Taako gave him A Look.

"Staycations,” he corrected.

"You gotta get out more." Taako ran up to one of the curbs and walked on the edges. He could be drunk and nimble, probably.

"Do I? My whole work is travel, I don't wanna do that when I'm off the clock." Kravitz looked up at Taako, confused about where all the extra height came from. Wasn’t too smart while drunk, either. “Travel’s expensive anyway.”

"Fair enough." Taako tripped off of the curb. Okay, not as nimble as he thought. "How're you getting back? Uber?"

"I drove here," he said, accompanied by a clumsy gesture over towards his old black sedan. Kravitz took out his keys and Taako lunged forward to grab them. He didn’t manage to get them all the way, though, standing there with his hands clumsily clasped around Kravitz’.

"Well, you're definitely not driving back, can’t collect those cool forty dollars if you bite it.”

Kravitz kept his eyes on their hands, unfocused and slow. "Am I that bad off?"

"I'd say so, yeah."

"Fuck." Kravitz stared at the concrete, gears grinding above his head. "How'd you get here?"

"My apartment's six blocks away." Taako considered calling an Uber for him, but the ride would be so expensive this late at night. He couldn’t drive either--too gay and drunk and also hadn’t practiced since he was in college. "Listen, I've got a couch--"

"I told you I don't _like_ hookups," he whined, trying to wrestle his keys back.

"It's not like that, man, you can _sleep_ on the couch."

Kravitz froze. “You’re sure?”

“Ab-so-lutely.”

He frowned. “You won’t do anything weird?”

“Geez, man, a’course not.” Yes, Kravitz was unfairly handsome. No, Taako wouldn't mind breaking off a piece of that for himself. But there was no universe in which Taako was cool with hooking up with a near-stranger while drunk off his ass. That’s just bad form all around. “I’m not givin’ you my fucking bed, but a couch is better than sleeping in your car all night, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Kravitz nodded and let go of his keys, allowing Taako to pocket them. “Yeah, that’s…that’s better than nothing, thank you.”

“Even say your please and thank yous when you’re drunk? Geez.”

“I’m a professional,” he said, every single syllable slurred. “Uh, where’s your place?”

“Just a little ways away.” Taako looped his arm in Kravitz’, just so he wouldn’t crash on the pavement. “Six blocks, but maybe we’ll get a little sobered up after the walking? Or some food, there’s--there’s a fucking, uh, there’s some…food. On the way.”

The walking did not sober them up.

The food would have helped if they didn’t both order three dollar beers at the taco truck.

Maybe Taako would have remembered to drink water if Kravitz wasn’t dedicated to making dick jokes at every possible opportunity. Shit was distracting. By the time they got back to Taako’s apartment, they were both ready to pass out on the floor. But Drunk Taako wasn’t about to piss off Sober Taako by letting Kravitz sleep in a weird position and then spend the whole next morning complaining about his back or something. He stumbled to his bed and took an extra pillow off it. No, he didn’t have a linen closet. That was for rich people.

When he found the living room after an embarrassing amount of time, Kravitz was already on the couch fumbling with the remote.

"O-o-o-okay," he said, something about his voice just a _little_ bit off. "I'm hijacking off your Netflix." Kravitz squinted at the remote, disappointed at his own drunk joke. Dude was making dick jokes a mile a minute and none of them were good. "That one didn't make any sorts of sense."

"Perfect grammar go out the window when I got a few drinks in you?" Taako couldn’t help but smile.

“Yeah, that’s, how it works.”

Okay, no, wait. That wasn’t the same voice. No amount of drunk could change a voice that much. It sounded like the difference between Cee Lo Green’s _Fuck You_ and _Forget You--_ technically the same voice and song, but with wildly different tones and implications.

Taako threw the pillow over the back of the couch and inspected Kravitz, as if his face could tell him about what voice should be coming out of his mouth. "Wait--didn't you have an accent?"

Kravitz pressed his face into the cushions. "'s my work accent."

 _"Work accent?"_ Taako leaned in closer to hear Kravitz’ voice through the cushioning. "You're not British?"

"No, I was born in West Virginia," he said, voice muffled.

 _"West Virginia?_ Oh, what a twist. What a shocker." Taako knew he was still smiling like he was endeared by this--this _guy,_ but Lup always said he was a clingy drunk. That must have been it. "You're a country boy?"

"No-o-o-o..." He poked his head out of the couch. Looked too guilty for that to be the truth. "Maybe."

“Thought your folks were rich.”

“There’s rich people in West Virginia.”

Taako blew a raspberry, but couldn’t feel it in his face. “Dude, where?”

“There’s, like, a podcasting empire there, I think?” He grabbed the pillow Taako threw to him and started to sit more horizontal. Some folks would call that _laying down,_ but Taako was a mathematician, not a dictionary. “Or it’s just the one family.”

“But you’re not part of the podcasting family, are you?”

Kravitz’ eyes flashed with a mischievous twinkle. “If I say no now, you won’t believe me.”

Taako pushed the pillow into his face.

“Well, _dear,_ I’d believe you had all that podcasting money, you’ve got a face for _radio,”_ Taako said, his smirk so smug that it reached his voice.

“Please, I could at least get on public access.” Kravitz pushed the pillow down far enough so that he could look Taako in the eye as properly as a drunk man could. “Maybe even a few thousand subscribers on Youtube.”

More than a few thousand, with that face. “Try a couple hundred.”

His mouth was still behind the pillow, but Kravitz’ smile crinkled his eyes. He couldn’t hide it if he tried. “So you admit that a couple hundred people would think I was hot enough to watch?”

“Depends on what your platform’s about.” Taako leaned forward, teasing. “Knowing you, it’d be just a bunch of weird videos of you swingin’ a sword in a dog park.”

“Please, I do that in the woods.” He seemed to regret his choice of words as soon as they left his mouth.

Taako figured he’d let that one slide…for now. “They really care about authenticity in the LARPing community?”

“If you’re going to do something, do it right.” Kravitz hoisted the rest of the pillow off of him without much force. “There was a heated debate over whether we should let someone with plastic surgery join in. We did, because that’d be shitty if we didn’t, since--”

“Oh, so your face is all natural?”

“Would that help or hurt my case?”

“If I was the judge?” Something about conversations with Kravitz just made grins manifest on Taako’s face, but he wanted to intimidate the poor guy anyway. He leaned over the couch, knit his brows as close as they could go, and that was his best shot at being scary. “You’d be leading the team of nerds, probably.”

The intimidation obviously did not work, as Kravitz watched Taako not with horror, but with surprise and a very faint hint of horny? Probably? He hadn’t been with a lot of fellows but he wasn’t naïve. He knew when someone had a thing for him, you don’t need to read ten thousand pages of Cosmo to figure that shit out. That usually didn’t matter when someone was drunk, though, because sometimes people were flirty drunks, and Kravitz didn’t seem like one, but you never know, and--

Maybe Taako was reading too much into all this. He was probably just surprised.

"...Are you hitting on me for real?"

"No, no, you're--" Taako realized how close his face had hovered over Kravitz’ and shot himself backwards. No, he was not _hiding_ behind the couch, he made himself very visible. Maybe too visible. He dipped down further. "You might look like you're cut from fuckin' marble, but, I'm not--not on the market."

"Double negative."

"I don't _want to date!"_ It might have sounded a little defensive, but it was true. He didn’t have a lot of serious boyfriends because that usually requires _meeting new people,_ which is generally an awful experience that he wasn’t in the mood to replicate even on a good day. "And, yeah, I get it, closer I get to forty, the more desperate I'll be, but-- _fuck,_ dating takes too much _energy,_ can't take it."

"I hear that." Kravitz blew out a breath like he just ran a marathon and sat up to position himself for better conversation. "I've tried dating apps. The ones for love aren't gay enough for me, and the ones that _are--_ well, it's Grindr, it's just Grindr."

Taako snorted. "So you're really not a hookup kind of boy?"

 _"No!"_ Kravitz seemed so shocked by the _idea_ of being a “hookup boy,” he had to brace himself on the edge of the couch.

"Hey, man, you don't gotta be _that_ vocal about it, I'm not a big fan either. It’s been a few years." It’s not like he never did it, but that was mostly in his early 20s when he thought he could purge the virginity out of himself. Oh, if he could just go back in time and yell at himself for thinking that was a thing he should have worried about in the first place. "I mean, sure, if I'm pent up enough, but it's, like--risk/reward, y'know?"

Kravitz seemed more lost than a guy trying to figure out the rules of Settlers of Catan just from watching his friend’s turns because he zoned out while they explained how to play. "I don't?"

“It’s like, who wants to meet new people?”

“I’m not as antisocial as you,” he said, smug.

"What if he’s a serial killer?"

“That can’t be _so_ common that you have to worry about it.” Kravitz wrinkled up his nose. “What’re the odds of that?”

“Probably high.” Taako laughed once. “Wait, I just remembered the guy who mistook MLM for multilevel marketing in my Facebook bio and then tried to, fucking, sell me some essential oils.”

“See, that feels like a worse risk all on its own to me!” Kravitz laid his head on the back of the couch as he tried to come up with yet another obvious question. “What about catching things?”

“You think I don’t bag that shit?” he asked, not mentioning that he wasn’t really sure which condom size he’d have to buy anyway. He forgot, it’s been a while, and he vaguely remembered someone fitting a whole condom on their forearm in high school, so how large of a size did anyone _really_ need? “And, again, what part of risk/reward don’t you get?”

“I guess, personally, any rewards aren’t good enough for me to risk that? I can do things myself, it’s quicker anyway.”

“I’m gonna, I’m gonna draw a hard line at hearing about your sex life.” Taako made a big show at plugging his ears, although he could still hear Kravitz hollering laughter.

Kravitz coaxed Taako’s fingers out of his ears. “Aren’t you my husband?”

“Not right now!”

“Fair enough.” He draped an arm over the couch, an attempt at relaxing. Or, at least, as close as someone like Kravitz could get to relaxation. The alcohol probably helped. “You did also just tell me about yours, I don’t see why I can’t talk about mine.”

“Fine, whatever, go ahead. Talk away.” Taako opened his arms invitingly. No, he didn’t want to hear about how much this guy liked to get himself off, but maybe he did? Fuck, he might need to go out and find some fun for himself soon, if he was this pent up over _Kravitz._ “I’m listening. Tell me all about how you think tuggin’ it is way better than going out and getting a couple extra hands, Your Highness.”

“Don’t--don’t say it like that.” It didn’t take long for Kravitz’ little game to turn into full-fledged shame. Dude wasn’t so tough when he actually had to talk about masturbation. “There’s not even any--uh--tugging involved.”

“Oh, store bought boy?”

“That’s probably the worst way you could say it!” Kravitz still laughed at it anyway, swatting at Taako like a fly in his soup. “I mean, you’re not wrong, it’s just. God, that’s weird.”

“Eh, you could still have some fun out there with other people, that’s not stoppin’ you.” It meant you had to be more careful vis a vis protection, but that didn’t stop Taako when he ran into that whole situation. No need to cut down your pool of eligible guys like that.

“I’m stopping me, Taako, that’s the point.” He sunk into the couch, decimated by the embarrassment. "I don't have a problem with other people doing it, I--I'm just really not made for something that casual. I, uh, I pine, usually."

"Aww."

"It's not that sweet."

"Kinda is, who wouldn't want to be doted on by--by someone like you?" Taako _ignored_ the look from before that made a repeat performance on Kravitz’ face. No, he wasn’t going to date his fake husband. Any feelings on Kravitz’ end were just the alcohol talking. "Okay, okay. Here's the deal--if this whole, uh, fake dating bullshit, is fucking up your dating life, then you'll tell me?"

"Can't really fuck up something that didn't exist in the first place,” he said, resigned. “But yes. I’ll tell you.”

“Sweet.” Taako slapped the back of the couch and stood up. His eyes felt heavy and the alcohol was starting to flare up into heartburn territory, best to sleep all that off. “Okay. Okay, so, time’s up on this whole party, I’m--gonna just. Go to my room. You fine with the couch?”

“Your couch is comfortable, actually.” Kravitz repositioned himself back to lay down, his face smushed into the pillow of his own accord this time. “I wouldn’t wanna move if I could.”

“Wait, really?” Taako vaulted over the side and laid at Kravitz’ feet. Kicked at his head a little. “Hmm, actually, you’re right. You should take my bed.”

Kravitz kicked back. “I just said I’m not moving!”

Taako put both hands behind his head, determined not to give Kravitz another inch. “Tough shit, I’m not moving either.”

“Fine, just…give me five minutes and I’ll steal your bed,” he said, voice huffy and groggy.

“Sounds like a plan, m’man.” Taako took one of the throw pillows and used that instead of stealing the actual sleeping pillow Kravitz still had on his side. He was drunk, it wasn’t like he needed the fancy digs. His brain launched itself right into unconsciousness before Kravitz had a chance to leave the couch.

* * *

Taako woke up to an alarm that wasn’t his. His brain crossed wires from the conversation last night and mistakenly thought he hooked up with some weird stranger. But he didn’t usually take them back to his place when he used to do that, and he hadn't done it in years, and he was on _his_ couch, so he corrected that little misunderstanding before he threw himself into shock.

He almost launched right back into shock when he saw Kravitz on the other end of the couch. At least they didn’t accidentally cuddle or anything in the middle of the night, but it’s weird to wake up with a new guy right next to you anyway. Wasn’t he supposed to take the bed? Maybe he just forgot.

"Shit." Taako moved his feet away from Kravitz’ head and checked his phone. They were _both_ late for work. "It's Monday!"

"It's Mon--" Kravitz sat up before Taako could remove his feet entirely and ended up with a foot to the chest. _"Ow--_ this is your apartment?"

"Too drunk to drive home." Taako ran towards his room to get dressed. He looked over his shoulder and saw Kravitz with a pout that reminded him of someone that just got spoiled for a movie that they just bought the tickets for. "Don't give me that face, I'm not doing anything to a drunk guy!"

“Fair enough.” Kravitz laid back down and repositioned his pillow. “Good night again.”

Taako kept his bedroom door open so he could yell at Kravitz while he got dressed. “What part of _Monday_ do you not understand, my dude?”

“It’s Columbus day, we’re off,” he shouted from the other room.

“Uh, then explain the ten emails I got from HR about how we’re _not_ off on Columbus day because it’s a racist as hell holiday?” Taako tore some of his clothes out of a drawer and got ready like he was in a high school performance of Legally Blonde trying to do the quick changes as if he were a professional.

“What?” Taako heard Kravitz’ unlock screen, a few clicks, and then Kravitz’ voice exhaling out a soft, “oh, shit.”

He didn’t bother with making himself look _good_ today, just passable. He ran out of his room and pat Kravitz on the shoulder before running to get his shoes and bag. “Yeah, oh shit, get crackin’, we’re takin’ your car.”

“What?”

“I’m late for the bus and your car’s six blocks away, let’s _go!”_ Taako clapped his hands, his best attempt at psyching Kravitz up. They needed to go now or else they would both be late. Taako didn’t like risking his job like that and he was sure Kravitz would care about things like punctuality.

“Okay!” Kravitz scrambled to sit up and gather his things. “Okay. Okay. Let me…” He pat down himself, found his keys, and stared a little too long at his blazer. “Oh, I am not dressed for work even a little bit.”

“You’re _fine!”_

“No, no, I’m not, not for my position.” Kravitz unlocked his phone and stared at it with wide eyes. Even from Taako’s distance, he could tell Kravitz was looking at the HR portal. The graphic design and colors of it were _that bad._ “How about this, I’ll drive you there, and then I’ll take PTO?”

“You get PTO?”

“You don’t?”

“I’ve…” Taako hummed. “Never really checked.”

“Now really isn’t the time to think about inequality in the workplace,” Kravitz said. He put himself together just enough to walk from Taako’s apartment to his car parked six blocks away. “Let’s get you to work.”

The ride to the office was quiet, but not at all awkward. Neither of them were too jived to talk. Kravitz put contacts in so he could actually get a pair of sunglasses over his face. It was another good look that Taako would have appreciated if not for his headache, made worse by the fact that their commute made them drive directly towards the sun. Why didn’t he get cool sunglasses? Maybe Taako should have just called in sick. Fuck. Why didn’t he just think to do that? Kravitz took a day, why shouldn’t he?

By the time Taako kicked himself for not taking a day, though, they were already in the parking lot. Best to save his sick days for a worse hangover when he didn’t have a ride.

Taako took a long while to get out of the car, spilling out the side like a cup of gravy toppled over. “I guess, thanks for the ride?”

“If you take a sick day after I carted you across town, I’m going to be,” Kravitz sighed and pinched his nose, “something, I can think of a better punishment later.”

“Do I really look that bad?” Taako waited for Kravitz to open his mouth and then waved his hand in his face to stop him. “No, no, this is the part where you go, ‘no, darling, you could never look bad even if you tried,’ you know, since, we’re ‘married.’”

Kravitz took a deep breath. “Honey,” he said, in the most sickeningly sweet tone Taako had ever heard, “you look like shit.”

Even with the hangover, Taako had to laugh at that one. Every chuckle felt like a new knife piercing his skull, but it’s hard to stop it once it starts. Kravitz seemed pleased that his joke went over well, too, and it wasn’t like Taako was going to deny him that. Just because he was nice enough to give him a ride, of course. He said his goodbyes to Kravitz and slung his bag over his shoulder, ready to tackle the day.

Until he ran into Brad two steps away from Kravitz’ car.

“Good morning!” He sounded too chipper for the time of day, a very tiny to-go coffee cup in one hand. “Don’t worry about being a little late, I mean, I was too! The traffic today, right?”

“Right…” Honestly, Taako wasn’t paying attention to the traffic at all.

“I’m so glad I ran into you, though! I’ve got something very serious to talk about to you and Kravitz, do you know where he is?”

“Oh, my boy? He’s sick.” Taako pointed to the car.

Brad peeked his head through the window. “Kravitz! You look terrible.”

“Thank you, Brad.” Kravitz did not seem amused by this at all. For an HR guy, Brad was always just a tad too blunt. “I’m going to call out sick today, I think. I was just dropping Taako off.”

“That’s good, you better get home and take care of that,” he agreed, head nodding like an annoyingly broken bobble head from 1997, “but there is one thing I’d like to talk to the two of you about in my office, first. It’s quick. Do you think you can stay for about five minutes to look over some paperwork?”

“I…” Kravitz shot a horrified look at Taako. Oh no. Oh no, this was bad. “I should be able to, I just don’t want to get you sick.”

“I’ll be fine!” Brad smiled and turned to the building, like being outside and not working for any longer would be a detriment to his health. “I’ve got some Airborne in my office, I’ll just take some of that real quick.”

Taako waited until Kravitz peeled himself out of the car before hissing, “who’s gonna tell him Airborne doesn’t actually work?”

 _“Taako.”_ Kravitz elbowed him. “What are we going to do?”

“Listen! It’s fine, just act natural.” Taako slung an arm around Kravitz’, faking a smile as he laid his head on his shoulder. Like married couples do. “Naturally sick.”

“I just hope this isn’t about the insurance forms…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh, if I don't catch up on my backlog, ya'll might get a delayed update in a few weeks :( but i'll try to get it done before it gets out of hand!!!
> 
> also thank you again to everyone that's enjoying this. oh it's about to get into some shit. just wait until next week :)


	6. Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brad has a little chat with the boys and they realize just how much trouble they've gotten into.

It was about the insurance forms.

Really, they should have seen this one coming. Most insurance companies actually, like, look into your family situations for some reason. It’s like they’re trying to cut down on fraud or something. Brad explained that the company called and claimed Taako and Kravitz weren’t married at all. There was no record of their marriage license, and that any union they had wasn’t recognized by the government at all.

Thankfully, Brad wasn’t too bright.

“I know, this is a lot to take in,” he said, watching Taako and Kravitz’ horrified faces.

“We’re not married?” To Kravitz’ credit, he managed to sound more crushed than an aluminum can in a trash compactor.

“Not legally, no.” Brad shuffled a few papers to look more official and smiled. “But don’t worry! I’ve already set up a few things to get you back on track.”

“What track are we talkin’ about?” Taako asked, his brain just a puddle of goo inside his skull.

“I told them the two of you got married in Vegas, and they were sympathetic.” He took out a piece of legal paper out of a folder and showed off the goddamn _handwritten_ notes he took while on the phone with the insurance company. “Apparently this has happened before! People think they’re legally married, and it turns out they aren’t. You really should check out who your officiate is and make sure all your paperwork is up to date before you do something like this.”

Taako could feel his cheeks flare up. He didn’t like to be lectured about real things, and definitely not fake marriages he didn’t have. He sat up a little straighter, ready to pick a fight. “That’s--”

“You’re right, we should have checked it.” Kravitz laid a hand on Taako’s to calm him down. For as shitty as he looked all hungover like that, his acting skills weren’t half bad. Maybe the hangover worked in his favor in this case. “I’m just so devastated we’re not actually married.”

“I mean.” Taako side-eyed Kravitz and took a minute to collect himself. No. Don’t freak out. This is the _perfect_ opportunity to swing this in their favor. “Listen, I am too, but, are they? Going to assume we did insurance fraud?”

They were _absolutely_ doing insurance fraud, but Brad was the last person that needed to know that.

“I already spoke with the insurance company, so you’re not in trouble. As long as it’s fixed before your next paycheck, there won’t be any consequences.” Brad put away the file in a cabinet that definitely wasn’t organized and took out a separate file from a new cabinet. “But you should go to the courthouse as soon as possible and get a legal marriage license. I know you’re sick today, Kravitz, so don’t worry about it yet, but don’t slack on this!”

Kravitz deflated. “My flight for the Reno conference leaves on Friday…”

“I can go ahead and approve a time off request for the both of you for…how about Wednesday and Thursday?” Brad wrote a couple lines of chicken scratch on a new piece of paper. “Just in case. I assume you want to be legally married as soon as possible?”

“We absolutely do.” Even in his condition, Kravitz could give a sickeningly genuine smile. “Thank you, Brad.”

“And, Taako, you look like you’re about to pass out too.” Brad spoke in his HR _no I’m not being condescending, I’m just worried about you_ voice with Taako, since he tended to be a little more prickly than a guy like Kravitz. “I’ll let Magnus and Merle know you were out sick today.”

“Really?” Taako coughed. It helped the act, but really his throat was just scratched up and dried out from the conversation’s panic. “I mean, I’m not complainin’ but…”

“I don’t want whatever the two of you have to pass through the office.” Brad put away the rest of his materials, his desk cleared in the businessman’s way of saying _what are you still doing in my office?_ “That should be everything, if you two want to run home and get some soup?”

“That sounds like a lovely idea, thank you Brad.” Kravitz put his hand on Taako’s back and helped him out of the seat and out the door. Hopefully Brad didn’t notice how much his hand shook. “Come on, honey.”

Kravitz and Taako waited until they were both in Kravitz’ car and out of the parking lot before saying a single word. They were rightfully spooked by this whole situation, only able to keep up the act at a base level as they walked out of the office. Any inconsistencies could be blamed on their fake sickness, Taako guessed, but that would only work in the short term. What would they do past that?

Shit, how were they going to get out of this one?

“Well, seems like we’ve both got the day off now.” Kravitz turned on his signal and moved off the freeway’s exit ramp, away from Taako’s apartment. “I think we need to have a longer chat. Are you okay with brunch?”

* * *

“Oh, fun game--” Taako hunched over the table and whispered so that the waiter couldn’t hear as he passed by, “whoever he puts the check in front of at the end, that’s the government assigned top.”

Kravitz scoffed and hid his face with his menu. “Taako, I would think that you would do better than to assign personality types to that sort of thing, it undermines our whole identity, and it opens the door for straight people to reduce us to those stereotypes.”

“Thanks for being such a wet blanket…” Taako skimmed the menu. For once, he wasn’t focused on how astronomically big this cafe’s menu was (there’s _no_ way all of the dishes are good if the menu is four pages long). His stomach had a hard time getting excited about anything with the threat of punishment over his head.

He got the feeling that Kravitz was equally bothered. Both of them kept quiet as the waiter came by with their drinks and to take their orders. Taako couldn’t even bring himself to mock Kravitz’ order, a waffle with so many toppings it could give an elephant diabetes. The eggs in his nested egg sandwich were burnt on one side and he didn’t even demand to speak to the chef responsible. Him and Kravitz looked like two sad men who just learned their vape shop was thousands of dollars in debt.

Kravitz did reach his hand across the table to put an arm on Taako’s. “Are you alright?”

By instinct, Taako moved his hand out of range. “I mean, I’m just as fucked up as you, but I don’t go around touchin’ near strangers about it.”

“I called your name about three times, Taako,” he said, frowning, “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t having some kind of episode.”

“I’m good, get off my case.” Taako took a violent bite of his sandwich. He didn’t need Kravitz’ _pity._ “What’s the plan, here? Because, I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re a little fucked.”

“You say that as if this isn’t explicitly your fault.”

“You joined in on this act, buckaroo.” Taako opened his sandwich and scraped some of the avocado off the bread. Not even a millennial needs that much avocado. “You’re an _accomplice.”_

Kravitz straightened his back, which was the first recorded piece of evidence of Kravitz having a backbone. “I only joined in so I wouldn’t go to prison, Taako!”

 _“Hush up!”_ Taako waved his knife in Kravitz’ general direction, which would be threatening if it wasn’t covered in avocado goop. “If you’re gonna yell at me about this insurance fraud, do it in private so we don’t go to juvie.”

“Why on _Earth_ would either of us go to juvie?” he asked, horrified.

“I lost my social security card a few years ago and had to get a new one, which I think means my legal birthday is five years ago.” Taako grimaced at the memory. He didn’t have his social security number memorized, which made the whole process way more difficult than it needed to be. “They wouldn’t send a five year old to adult prison.”

“I don’t think I even have the energy to fight you on that,” Kravitz said, most of the words slurred in a sigh. “I assume since you decided to start this little scheme, you had a good way of getting out of it?”

“Uh.” Whoopsie uh-oh. “That’s a negative on that one.”

“You.” Kravitz blinked like the lights on a router trying to connect to the internet in the middle of a thunderstorm. He took a moment to breathe, but still looked like he was going to choke at the end of it. “You started an insurance scam. Without any sort of exit strategy?”

“Well, when you put it that way, it makes me seem like the asshole, doesn’t it?”

“That’s. Because. _You are!”_ Kravitz did not raise his voice this time, but the presence of his voice filled Taako’s ears like he was sitting in the front row of some shitty underground metal concert. Kravitz pointed his finger right at Taako, which made his ears burn in embarrassment. It was demeaning, and Kravitz wasn’t even technically _wrong._ “You! You’re the asshole!”

“Me???" Taako pressed a hand to his chest in mock distress. Alright, maybe it wasn’t as mock as he wanted it to come out. Still counted. “I was just trying to get forty fucking dollars!”

Kravitz buried his head in his hands and bent over his waffle so much that he got syrup on his forehead. “Holy shit, we need a lawyer.”

“You’re, uh. You’re not gonna turn me in, are you?”

“I could.” Kravitz lifted his head from the waffle, his eyes pointed in Taako’s direction but not looking at him. His face was completely neutral and hollow, his voice monotone. “I could say that you coerced me into running an insurance scam with you. I’m sure Brad would believe me over you.”

“But you’re, uh.” Taako had the urge to run and freeze at the same time. “You’re, like, too nice for that, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said, punctuated by a fluid swipe of his thumb on his forehead to remove the syrup. It’d be a smooth move if it didn’t look so menacing.

_“Ha, h-hey, man, let’s just, take a couple’a steps back, and--_

“No, Taako, I’m not going to do anything like that.” Kravitz took a deep breath and reset his posture. He still looked ragged, but not like he was about to murder Taako. “I’m sorry, I’m just. Stressed.”

Taako melted into his chair. He wasn’t sure if it was in relief or fear. “With talk like that, I think I’m feelin’ exactly the same thing.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s…whatever, let’s just. Breeze right past that.” Taako took a couple more bites out of his sandwich, and Kravitz did the same with his waffle. Took a collective moment to get their shit together and move away from the threats. There must be a way out of this without getting too deep into it, right? “What’re we supposed to do? Like, for real. I’m lookin’ for actual solutions here.”

Kravitz shook his head, his eyes off Taako now. “If we come clean, there’s no way we’ll come out without some sort of punishment.”

“Like, they take away all eighty dollars we’ve both stolen from them?” That wouldn’t be too bad. It’d put a dent in Taako’s finances but he’d be okay. He wasn’t sure about Kravitz, but maybe he could help spot him some money in the meantime.

“I think the fine would be more than eighty dollars…” Kravitz tapped his fork on his plate, and the metal on ceramic sound didn’t help either of their demeanors. “Maybe jail? I don’t know.”

“Well then, what’re our options?” Taako let out a humorless laugh, like when cats purr in distress instead of comfort. “Seems like we’re fucked no matter which way we try to get out of it. Can’t exactly pretend to get a divorce now, that’d be obvious. And it’s not like either of us can afford a lawyer, right?”

“You’re right, I couldn’t, at least not right now…” Kravitz stopped his fork in mid-waffle delivery. The piece slid right off the prongs. His brain looked entirely offline. “Oh no.”

“What?” Taako kicked under the table restlessly. “Did you get an idea?”

“No, I didn’t, it’s alright,” he said, an obvious dodge.

“You obviously did.” Taako kicked the table harder. Time to play bad cop bad cop (for when there’s only one cop. Or when there’s two. Taako wasn’t a fan of cops, ever). “It’s better than nothing, right? We’re brainstorming, that’s it!”

Kravitz shook his head. “You’re going to hate it.”

“I’ll hate it less than _jail,_ probably, thank you.” Taako groaned when Kravitz put his hands over his mouth, as if he could _hide_ like _that._ “Come _on,_ if you’re gonna hide from me for asking you to tell me your ideas--”

“We might actually have to get married,” he blurted out, deadpan.

“What.”

“We can get a divorce whenever we’d like! And it’s a good idea for both of us to sign a prenup, too…” Kravitz spoke faster than he could think, which was bad because the words coming out of his mouth could have used a little more thought. “It’s not like we have to actually-- _act_ \--married in our off time, but it’s a good way to stay out of jail.”

_“What.”_

“We can make a deal to divorce in a year, if that helps?” Kravitz rested his hand in his chin all contemplative like _The Thinker,_ and it _would_ be sexy if not for all the bullshit he was spewing. “And then we can do a big divorce act, and it’ll be off our hands forever…only if you’re comfortable with that, of course.”

“Wh--”

“You know what I’m talking about, Taako, please don’t play dumb.” Kravitz offered a hand across the table in comfort. They really didn’t need the act here, in the middle of a cheap brunch venue, what was his aim? “It might not be the best situation, but is it better than a huge fine that neither of us can afford?”

“Or jail.”

“Or jail.” He nodded once, now more calm than anyone should be in this situation. “I’m not expecting anything of you, I just. It’d be bad if either of us got in trouble.”

It wasn’t…the worst idea. It really wasn’t. And that was probably the scariest part. He _could_ do a year of this fraud with Kravitz, and it would be fine. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he did for money, but it would be the most _dangerously_ illegal. Honestly, he wasn’t even worried that much about having to fake this whole marriage, but the fact that Kravitz had a lot of power over him didn’t sit right in his stomach.

He needed to talk to Lup about all this.

“Can I think about it?”

“Of course,” Kravitz said, overeager. Obvious that his mind was already made up. “I would just say, um, it would be nice to have an answer before Wednesday?”

“No, yeah, for sure…” The whole weight of this situation crashed down on Taako like a house of cards that was made of bricks. “Fuck.”

“At least all we’d have to do is go to the courthouse and do some paperwork.” Kravitz attacked the rest of his waffle, able to eat now that all the drama was unfolded on the table. “This wouldn’t be some backwards medieval marriage, where we’re married forever and someone has to stand outside our door on our wedding night to make sure we consummated.”

 _“Tell me_ that’s a joke.”

“It’s not.” He shoveled a forkful of waffle and whipped cream in his mouth. “I read about it in a history class once.”

“I mean, how do you even get the job of waitin’ outside some straight couple’s door to make sure everyone gets off?” Taako snorted just thinking about it. The image didn’t lighten his mood enough to make him better, but he could call himself functional. “Do you draw straws? What even constitutes as a win, there?”

“Beats me.” Kravitz shrugged, his words hard to understand around pillows of waffle. “Personally, I think getting the job is a loss.”

Fuck it, Taako was well enough to make a little bit of a risqué dig against Kravitz. What’s the fun of having a fake husband if you can’t at least do that? “They don’t make people consummate these days, though, huh?”

“I think in some states you _technically_ have to, but nobody’s going to check.” Kravitz whipped out his phone and typed out an essay of a question onto the screen. “Ah, it looks like you can get an annulment if you ‘fail to consummate.’”

“Sounds like a good way for us to get out if we actually do it.”

“Oh! You’re right about that.” He put his phone away. “Good to know for when we actually want a divorce.”

“Unless,” Taako said, one eyebrow raised like he was the main character on a Dreamworks movie poster.

“Unless _what?”_

“Oh, nothing.” Taako couldn’t stop the grin creeping up on his face.

“Nothing my _ass,_ Taako,” Kravitz said, trying his best to look annoyed at the situation. If anything, he was having just as good of a time as Taako.

“I’m just having a little fun at your expense!” He took his napkin and halfheartedly threw it on the plate, casting it to the end of the table. “Call it payback for scaring the shit out of me by threatening legal action.”

“Fair enough.” Kravitz did the same, and they both kicked back until the waiter came back around. “Once he drops off the check, I’ll drive you home.”

All cheap brunch establishments are booked full from eleven to two, so it didn’t take long for the waiter to toss the check to the two of them. Taako and Kravitz simultaneously alternated between staring at the check to each other.

No fucking way.

“Oh, look at that, Taako.” Kravitz gestured towards the bill that was placed _just far enough_ away from Taako to be on Kravitz’ side of the table. _“I’m the top.”_

This was going to be a long fucking marriage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update is going to be on the 7th of next month, because i'm just a BIT behind on next chapter and i need to plan for a big dnd game this upcoming weekend. i don't want to kill myself over this fic!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	7. Awkward Sibling Chat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup talks to Taako about this big mess he got into.

“Oh bejeezus, that’s quite the fucking pickle,” Lup said after he explained the whole situation to her, in a voice that really shouldn’t be able to say _bejeezus_ with complete sincerity.

“Yeah, _no shit.”_ Taako fucked up. He remembered he could only do shit in college when he had a specific deadline that he couldn’t procrastinate with, so he invited Kravitz over Tuesday night to give him a real answer and apply for a marriage license if they agreed to get hitched. Turns out he could still procrastinate while making dinner for him and Lup and Barry and not actually make up his fucking mind. Kravitz would be over in a half hour and Taako _still_ didn’t know his answer. “So what do I even do at this point?”

Lup, who was relegated to vegetable chopping duty, sighed as she chopped an onion clean in half. “You know, I expected something like this.”

“And you didn’t stop me?”

“If you’ll remember, I _kind of_ tried to.” She shrugged and cut the onion in thin, long slices. No dicing today, they wanted that sweet onion crunch in this stir fry. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it, in my own defense.”

Taako’s voice cracked just like the shrill squeak of the hot water going through the tap. “This is my _brand,_ Lup, of course I’d do it!” He already regretted washing his hands with dish soap instead of running to the bathroom to grab some human soap, but whatever.

“It’s not like you usually go out of your way to break laws this big.” Lup didn’t look up at him to call him out, too focused on her prize onion. “Your version of _be gay do crimes_ is to steal lotion samplers from Bath and Body Works.”

“Hey, I like how the eucalyptus ones smell and I don’t want to pay twelve dollars for it, get off my fuckin’ back.” He did _not_ put the lotion on his hands. Yet. He’d have to wash them again after cutting the chicken anyway.

With a single motion, she slid half of the onion pieces into a pan to caramelize. Secret recipe: caramelize half the onions, barely cook the rest. That way you get the flavor _and_ the texture. “I mean, personally, if I was going to steal soap I’d go for the artisanal honey shit, but go off, I guess.”

“This isn’t about soap, Lup!” Taako was upset, and rightfully so, but not upset enough to forget to check on the chicken. He flipped all the breasts so the other side could cook. “I could go to tax jail!”

“But on the bright side, you’d go to tax jail _with Kravitz,”_ she said, bumping her shoulder with his now that he was in range.

“What does that have anything to do with it?”

“Aren’t you two, like, friends now?” Lup waggled her brows in the most infuriating way. “More than that?”

“What? No, that’s an act.” Taako laughed like it was a performance, because it wasn’t even funny. It was just ridiculous. Didn’t even merit a real laugh. “Are you saying we’re so good that I got you all fooled?”

“Hmm. Nah, I’m not saying a thing.” She grabbed a bell pepper and cored it in the least innocent way possible. “Let’s call that payback.”

“Payback for _what?”_ Taako could afford to take his eyes off the pan to give Lup a devastatingly intimidating look. It didn’t work, because she burst out into laughter immediately, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

“You knew Barry had a crush on me for a year and didn’t even tell me!” Lup dumped the stem and seeds into the trash, delicately cutting around the bitter whitish insides of the pepper. “Do you know how much smooching I could have gotten in for a year?”

It wasn’t that scandalous, but Taako had a brand to uphold, and that brand was _grossed out by his sister’s love life._ He clamped one hand over an ear and his shoulder over the other so he could keep hold of his spatula. “Gross, I don’t want to think about it.”

Lup turned her head nearer to him and shouted, “at least ten! Maybe more.”

“Yeah, yeah, great, Lup, you and your husband love each other _so much_ and I’m nauseated by it.” Taako checked the other side of the chicken and brought the half-cooked breasts to the cutting board. “Can we cut to the important shit? Like, me not going to jail?”

“I dunno, sounds like you’ll have to marry him to get out of this one.” Later, Taako would catch on to her sarcasm. Hindsight is 20/20.

But he didn’t in the moment.

“That’s what Kravitz said, bu--”

“Wait, I was joking.” Lup kept her eyes on Taako as she dumped the rest of the pepper waste into the trash. “He suggested it _for real?”_

“So that neither of us go to _jail,_ Lup!” Good thing about cutting chicken into cubes: you don’t have to look directly at your sister while she’s teasing you. “Do you know what would happen to me if I went to jail?”

“You’d gain the favor of every prisoner there by working in the cafeteria and _killing it,_ but then mysteriously die in your cell because of warden mistreatment?”

“Ex _actly!”_ Taako tried to keep it casual as he cubed chicken. It was an art. He couldn’t get too distracted by Lup, or else it’d all be uneven and would cook weird. “You see how high the stakes are.”

“I just think there are other ways to solve this than physically getting married,” she said, in a mock half-song that Taako hadn’t heard since she was twelve and teasing him on the schoolyard about some boy in their class.

“Oh yeah?” Portion and emotional control over, these chicken cubes were uneven as _shit._ “Name one. Kravitz and I are _up for it.”_

Lup laughed in his face for that one and went back to vegetable duty. Carrots next. “No, I think this is funny and I’m having a blast letting the two of you figure it out.”

“See? You don’t know. It’s way harder than it looks.” Taako turned up the heat and threw some spices into the pan. If Lup was almost done with vegetables, he needed the chicken to be seasoned and done soon. “And, let’s face it, if this is how you met Barry--”

“I’m stopping you right there, you think you and Kravitz are at all comparable to me and my beloved jeaned husband?” Lup slammed a plate full of perfectly cut vegetables next to Taako, a threat to cook faster. More likely a threat to speak up about the crush he really didn’t have on Kravitz. But she had quite the imagination, so it wasn’t like Taako could stop that line of thought. “Because, if you are, I gotta warn you that it sounds a lot like you’re considering something with Kravitz. Who, may I remind you, is my boss.”

“Your hot boss,” he corrected without thinking.

_“Oh my god, you’re considering it.”_

“I’m not! I just have eyes and ears.” Taako didn’t even want to look at his sister, and only half of that was because he wanted to make sure his uneven chicken cubes were cooking right.

“Ears?” Lup laced her fingers together in her best impression of an actress in the most sarcastic performance of _Romeo and Juliet_ as she leaned into Taako’s back. “Oh, ears to hear his melodic beautiful voice, is that what you’re fucking getting at?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Lup, I’m saying he’s a--stop!” Taako pushed her away. He didn’t need this. If Lup wasn’t his sister he would have stormed out of the room in frustration ten minutes ago. “A chaotic force of nature! Who says the most buckwild shit I’ve ever heard!”

Lup’s voice shifted from horrible fairytale princess to condescending baby talk, which wasn’t her specialty but it still stung the same. “A perfect, ideal candidate for your _real life husband--”_

“Stop!” Taako turned off the heat. Fuck it, he didn’t care if it was cooked properly, Lup and Kravitz and Barry could all have medium rare chicken for all he cared. “I’m trying to get real advice here, Lup.”

“Oh, you want real advice?” Lup got all up in his space like she was about to mug him. “Real shit?”

“Why else would I be here?” Taako did check the chicken for real before throwing it and Lup’s vegetables in a clean pan over low heat. “Cut all the goofs, I just want pure, unfiltered advice.”

“Straight from the nog?”

“Sure, yes, that,” he said, only half listening as he shook more spices into the pan. She wasn’t going to say anything serious, and they both knew it.

She laughed. “Marry him.”

Taako rolled his eyes like he was a surly teen trapped in an adult body in a _Freaky Friday_ remake. “After _all that,_ and you agree with me?”

“I mean not just for the--” She stopped and waggled her eyebrows again. Taako did not like this pattern of eyebrow waggling. “Tax benefits.”

“Gross,” he said, completely monotone, because he did _not_ want to give her the satisfaction of his embarrassment.

“I’m saying, marry him for love _and_ all the other neat-o things that come with it.” She checked him with her hip, like she was a supporting character in a heterosexual Hallmark movie, and not his sister telling him to marry a near-stranger _for love._ “How bad could it be?”

“You genuinely want me to marry Kravitz.” Taako said it slow and clear so the idea could sink into her mind. “Like, for real.”

“Hell yeah,” she said, pumping her fist once like it was 2009.

“You, my sister, who turns on The Bachelor with your husband to make fun of everyone falling for the same milquetoast white guy, when that’s _exactly what you did.”_

“This is different.” She seemed to consider this. “But in my defense, the guys on TV don’t have any personality. Barry is _Barry.”_

“Sure, but you do the same thing when 90 Day Fiancé is on!” Taako waved at himself like he was a sandwich sign flipper advertising people to walk right in. “My exact situation!”

“But you’re my brother and I’m legally obligated to sympathize with you and your fake husband.”

“I don’t know why I even _bothered_ to come here.” Taako turned back to his pan and stirred everything around. He still had no idea what to do and Lup was making a big joke out of it. And, sure, he’d do near the same thing in her position, but this was affecting _him_. That’s different.

“Wait, hold on.” Lup lowered her voice and slung a gentle arm around his shoulder, on the whole more genuine and caring. “Come here, I do actually have real advice to give you, as a wise older sister.”

He opted to ignore her. Taako kind of hated this more than the teasing. “You’re not the older sister.”

“I am right now.” She tightened her grip on him like she was afraid he’d run. A valid fear. He’d jump out the window if he was on a lower floor. “Do you want real advice or not?”

“I do, but something tells me I won’t get that here, so…”

“I’m serious right now, Taako.” Lup tapped his cheek, some of the later taps being closer to a slap. “Come on.”

“Alright! Alright, fine.” Taako turned the heat down to a simmer so that he could put all his focus onto his sister. How generous of him. She should be touched. “Whatever you’ve got, I’m all ears.”

“If I were you, I’d marry him to dodge jail or whatever, that’s a nonissue,” she said, nodding as she spoke so Taako would do the same out of instinct, “but I’d also, like, try dating him? Just for a little bit? See if it’s anything?”

He took the advice like a record scratch interrupting _Mambo No. 5._

“Uh-uh, no, nope, you know I’m not on the market.” Taako broke away from her grip. It wasn’t even that he had any _bad_ relationships. Sometimes you just gotta take a year off for yourself. Or five years. Or more than that. “Taako is a-closed for business until further notice, thank you very much. Not ruining my fuckin’ single life.”

“Not even for a cute boy that’s obviously got a thing for you?”

“When the boy’s that cute, you have to wear actual pants to go to dinner,” he said, hoping to blow it over with a joke. Lup didn’t seem amused. Fine, he’d have to give her actual logic. “And he doesn’t have a thing for me! He’s just lonely and horny, Lup, that’s different.”

She whacked him in the arm. “Don’t comment on my boss’ level of horniness--”

“We’re not dating for real!” Before Lup had a chance to retort, Taako’s phone buzzed. A merciful reprieve. It was a text from Kravitz, too long to be shown in full on his lockscreen preview, but he could get the gist of what he was trying to say. “Okay, shit, he’s out front. Go get the door and _don’t fucking make this weird.”_

“Oh, sure, I’ll try not to make this any weirder than it already is.” Lup stepped away from Taako just in time to dodge a sibling vibe check. “Fellas, is it gay if I marry my bro to save forty dollars?”

_“Lup.”_

“Just give him a little kissaroo at the courthouse?” She trotted around the kitchen counter and into the living room. “You know, the normal thing bros do when they try to pull off an insurance scam but then end up getting married in a real, legally binding way.”

_“Go get Kravitz!”_

Lup dabbed and ran off. She sang to herself as she slipped on her shoes. “Two dudes, chilling in a courthouse, five feet apart ‘cause they’re not gay.”

Taako poked his head around the corner to shout her away. “We’re both gay!”

“I meant gay for each other, shut up!” Lup spent a minute trying to unlock Taako’s sticky lock (it only stuck because _she_ tried to put some jelly on it) and rushed out. “BRB!”

Usually, he’d whine about her use of textspeak in actual, vocal conversations, but figured he shouldn’t push anything with her today. He makes one mistake and does an insurance scam with a hot boy and she thinks they should get married for real? What was this, the dark ages? A parallel universe where people were allowed to be gay in the dark ages without being burned at the stake?

He couldn’t even humor her and call him and Kravitz a good match. He barely knew the guy. Sure, they had fun hanging out and had a good conversational flow, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe Kravitz thought he was hot and Taako felt the same way. Whatever! That sort of thing means shit for real life compatibility.

Taako grumbled to himself about Lup’s whole…thing for him and Kravitz as he took the rice off the heat and got everything ready to serve. Fuck it, people could make their own plates. This was a casual dinner between friends, not a five star Michelin restaurant.

As Taako finished setting things up, he heard Lup struggling with the door again. He groaned and went to save her, but the door swung open before he made it all the way there.

“Look! I found a hunk outside!” Lup carried a few grocery bags and leaned into Barry, who was carrying way more.

Kravitz balked at the comment. “Lup, I’m your boss.” He stepped forward, clutching his laptop case and a plastic grocery bag close to him.

“I could not more clearly be talking about Barry.” Lup rushed inside and practically threw her bags onto the kitchen counter. “Also he brought those weird citrus beers so you wouldn’t whine about them.”

“They’re not that bad.” Barry put a six pack of Shock Top onto the counter and nodded at Taako. “I like them, too.”

“Citrus sounds like it wouldn’t be any good in beer,” Kravitz said in his awful British accent, and gingerly placed one of those crinkly plastic containers of grocery store cookies on the counter. “Sorry, I thought I should bring something, but I don’t know if these are any good.”

“They’re not the best, but it’s _real_ fuckin’ hard to mess up a chocolate chip cookie beyond repair.” Taako took one out and devoured it. Kravitz looked at him like he committed a murder. “Dude, don’t look at me like you’re about to tell me I _spoiled_ my dinner, are you a fuckin’ househusband from the 1950s?”

Kravitz frowned, his face collapsing in on itself like a crumpled piece of paper. But a serious piece of paper, like a tax form or a birth certificate. “Don’t spoil your dinner, Taako.”

Taako ate another cookie. Kravitz pretended to be more offended. Taako _ignored_ Lup’s eyebrow waggling that was just out of Kravitz’ cone of view.

“Anyway, I’m usually all about pausing for dramatic effect and cutting to commercial, and all that sort of thing, but…” Taako paused for dramatic effect. Kravitz glowered at him. “I do think, that, perhaps, maybe. It wouldn’t be the worst idea to get married for real for a year or so.”

Some hidden stress seemed to melt out of Kravitz’ shoulders and back like ice cream flowing down the sides of a waffle cone when you don’t lick the edges fast enough. “You have no idea how much of a relief that is, Taako, thank you.”

“It’s fine.” Taako waved his hand like he could swat the words away. If he acted humble maybe Kravitz would praise him more. Did he want that?

“I’ll go ahead and apply for a marriage license now.” Kravitz took his laptop out of his case. “They let you do it online, so it’ll only be a little bit. What’s your Wifi password?”

“You can do that after you eat, you goddamn workaholic.” Taako shooed at the laptop, like it had the sentience to move away. “It’s after business hours anyway, s’not like they’re gonna accept it earlier if you do it now.”

“You’re right.” Kravitz took in a breath and put the laptop away. He watched as Lup and Barry made themselves at home in the kitchen. “Is it just a first come first serve thing?”

“Yeah. Just grab what you want. And stop it with the fake accent, that shit’s not gonna fly here.” Taako moved into the kitchen to make his own plate, and watched as Lup almost dropped hers.

“That’s a FAKE ACCENT?” she asked, and her voice was not loud, but it was not quiet, and it shook every bone in every body and moved every piece of free standing furniture two inches to the left.

Well, at least dinner would be interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay!! so! this fic is officially moving to an "every other friday" update schedule! thanks for your patience!!!
> 
> also yes this is how i make stir fry, i really like onions


	8. Hitched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a fun, hilarious, heartwarming trip to a shitty Tex-Mex restaurant. (Also there is a light description of a panic attack in here)

Luckily, it was smack dab in the middle of the month, so their marriage license was approved by Wednesday afternoon. Kravitz texted him with the news. They could get married on Thursday, but they needed a couple witnesses. That wasn't a problem. Lup and Barry volunteered to take the day off. It wasn’t like they could get much done with Kravitz out.

Apparently it also cost a whole $20 to get married, but Lup insisted she’d pay.

“For the lolz,” she said, and if Taako didn’t love her so much he’d kill her right then and there.

Kravitz picked the three of them up and they all carpooled to the courthouse together. The ride was eerily casual, as if they were rolling up to a Taco Bell drive thru instead of legally joining two people in the car for at least a year. The whole thing felt off. How could everyone be so calm about all this? They talked about what they wanted for lunch with the same tone as they discussed Kravitz bringing a glass to break after the ceremony.

“But we’ll probably need to break it outside,” Kravitz continued, as Taako reached into his bag to inspect the glass. “Also, which one of us even breaks it? We’re both the groom.”

“Taako doesn’t keep kosher ‘cause he’s _lazy,_ so he’s lost breaking privileges,” Lup teased, kicking Taako’s seat from behind.

Normally, Taako would bite back about making sure all the meals he cooks for her _are_ kosher, but all his attention was on the glass. It wasn’t nice, it was definitely the product of a harried Goodwill run with the little orange sticker still tacked on, and it probably wouldn’t fly in a nice planned wedding. But it was still here, in his hands. Kravitz still had to run out to find one and bring it with him. It wasn’t something he could do accidentally, it was with serious intent.

It was probably just because Kravitz was just, like, more religious than him or something. Or he liked the tradition. Or he wanted to make this look more authentic so they didn't get caught. Nothing more than that.

One of his thoughts decided to go rogue and escape out of his mouth. “Damn, it’s like it’s a real wedding.”

“It _is_ a real wedding.” Kravitz didn’t take his eyes off the road. “That’s the point of this whole trip.”

“Well, a _legal_ wedding.” Taako carefully slipped the glass back in the dishtowel that _totally_ was also from Goodwill. “Not like, a real _real_ wedding.”

Taako was too busy being annoyed by Lup’s disappointed groan to see Kravitz’ knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.

* * *

“Well, that was a fun way to get kicked out of a courthouse,” Lup said, once they settled down into the not-so-comfortable booth of the cheapest and least authentic Mexican restaurant in town. They really took the Mex out of Tex-Mex, but their margaritas were cheap and you could order fajitas for two for eleven dollars. 

“If the clerk wasn’t so exhausted, you might have gone to _jail.”_ Barry frowned. “And then what would happen to the baby?”

Lup stared him down. “What baby.”

“The food baby I’m about to make with all these chips.” Barry gestured to the two bowls of chips in front of them. Okay, they weren't chips _yet._ You had to make them into chip shapes yourself. At the moment, they were just a half dozen baked tortilla discs. Taako could never determine whether the staff was too lazy to smash the chips into shape or if they left them in huge discs for the guests to snap off themselves for the Aesthetic™.

They also put the salsa in little jars at the side so that they didn’t have to pour bowls for every guest, so Taako went ahead and got one of the little plastic bowls they provided and poured the spiciest salsa in there. He usually liked to mix the spicy and the mild together just to be a contrarian, but today it just felt like his body was moving on its own. Going through the motions. He barely even _remembered_ the marriage ceremony. Walked right into the courthouse and blanked out immediately. He kind of remembered saying words and walking places, but that could have been a whole other person in his place.

The only image that stuck in his mind was Kravitz’ smile throughout the whole ceremony. But like the rest of their marriage, it was completely fake. He didn’t even have to keep up the act for that long. As far as Taako could tell, the whole thing lasted fifteen minutes _tops._ And then he zoned out even more. If someone really pressed him for details, he might be able to recite a few things from the ceremony, but every memory was in tunnel vision. Didn't even have a clue why they got kicked out of the courthouse. He didn’t remember Lup’s hold on his arm as much as he still felt it, slightly bruised, as the four of them ran out.

“Hey, are you getting any of this?” asked Lup, nudging his bruised arm.

Guess he was still zoned out. “Barry’s pregnant?”

“No! That was a joke. _I hope.”_ Lup glanced across the table to pout at Barry so cartoonishly that even Donald Duck wouldn’t take her seriously. “Barry, you’d tell me if you were cooking buns, right?”

To his credit, Barry didn’t sweat or fumble over the question. “I would, but I think that’s not going to happen with all of the boy juice injections.”

“And my titty skittles,” she said, nodding like this was a normal thing for a sane person to say. “No, but how’s married life treating you?”

“Exactly the same as before?” He wanted to be pissed at how casual she still was about all this, but then she'd be worried about _him,_ and that was a fate worse than insurance jail. Taako shut his menu. He knew what he wanted, the only thing on the menu that wasn’t riddled with food poisoning. He threw his menu on the edge of the table, and the thud was just a couple decibels too loud. “Look, it’s not like anything’s gonna change now, remember? This was? To make sure we don’t go to jail?”

She snuggled in closer to Taako, teasing him. At this point it wasn’t even endearing. He figured she'd clock that something was up by now and stop this shit. “I thought you’d be a _little_ happy, married to a face like th--”

“Lup, I would be very careful how you finish that sentence,” Kravitz said after carefully folding his menu and placing it on top of Taako’s. “Not only am I your boss, but also, I’m your brother in law now.”

“What, just because you’re related and ‘writing my checks,’ I can’t call it like I see it?”

Kravitz’ voice felt further away. “Brad writes your checks.”

Taako could barely hear Lup’s voice. “Does that _matter--”_

“I’ve gotta tinkle,” Taako said, shoving Lup out of the booth so he could escape to the back of the restaurant. Usually he’d be howling at this banter, but he just didn’t feel up for it right then. Could everyone just fucking chill?

He heard Lup call out, “weird way of saying it, but, have fun?” as he made a beeline to the men’s room, which was helpfully marked by a cactus. It did not help that the cactus was shaped in a less than family-friendly way. It also did not help that the other door was labeled with a taco. Yes, this restaurant had a lot of problems.

Taako didn’t feel like hiding in one of the stalls, that shit’s for cowards, so he did what any sensible person would do: squeeze himself in between a urinal and one of the dividers. It didn’t offer much privacy, but he wasn’t really looking for that. It’d probably feel worse if he shoved himself in a smaller space at this point. He needed to breathe, not to hide. Taako felt _fine,_ sure, sometimes a fella just bites off more than he can chew. And sometimes a fella would _really appreciate_ if everybody stopped casually calling Kravitz his husband. Even if that's what he was. 

He hooked his arm over the top of the divider. What was the point of these things if you could still peek over the top and see someone else’s dick anyway?

Anyway, back to the panic attack.

If it could even be called that. He didn’t feel panicked or anything, so it was probably fine. Taako tuned out all the time for shit he didn’t care about, he just couldn’t give any fucks about the wedding. It wasn’t even a wedding, they just went to the courthouse and paid half of his cool stolen forty dollars to get some paperwork signed. There weren’t any rings, or crying relatives, or bad catering decisions, or anything! For all the hubbub Lup and Barry and Kravitz made of it, it was still _fake,_ even if he was actually, legally married.

Oh, shit. He was actually, legally married.

Right, okay, _there_ was the panic.

It still wasn’t attacking him, not really. It was there, though, and it was hard to ignore. More like a panic _reminder._ Like the feeling of hitting the snooze alarm for the fourth time and knowing that a loud buzz is going to invade your sleep in five minutes, so you can’t kick it and relax in your warm bed. It wasn’t even that being married to Kravitz was bad. Out of all the fake husbands to have, Kravitz seemed fairly low maintenance and not an asshole. Or at least, not an asshole in the way one would assume a fake husband would be, demanding favors and all that. Surprisingly, Kravitz wasn’t the problem.

Like, the wedding was fine, and the marriage was fine, but the fact that everyone was so casual about it was _not_ fine. It was a big fucking deal, and Lup was here joking about it like it was a funny in-joke they had during board game night? Sure, that could have been how she was coping with it, but it would just be nice if someone came in and _acknowledged_ how fucked up this was.

And, as luck would have it, the bathroom door swung open.

Now, it almost would have been less weird if a stranger walked through the door. Lots of strange shit happens in public restrooms. Sure, sometimes you'll walk into a public restroom and see a dude hanging off a urinal. Totally normal. Just piss in the stall to give him some space. He wouldn’t have to explain himself to a stranger.

Unfortunately, he would have to explain himself to Kravitz.

“I thought you would be in the other restroom because of the taco, but unless you’re a North Carolinian governor, I think you can agree that I don’t belong in there.” Kravitz didn’t move too close, made sure Taako had enough space, and somehow that courtesy was more sickening than any violation he could make to Taako’s privacy. “Are you alright?”

“Wow, way to be a creep, dude.” Taako shrunk into the urinal divider more, like it was a shield. Sure, he didn’t want to be alone, but he didn’t _not_ want to be alone, if that had any logic. He knew it didn’t and there wasn’t a good way to articulate that, so hiding behind a urinal made the most sense. “Following me in here and everything.”

“Sorry, I just thought you wanted to talk without your sister breathing down your neck.” Kravitz kept one hand placed on the metal slab where a doorknob should be on a normal door. Ready to leave at any time. “I can leave, if you want to be alone.”

“I’m fine,” Taako said, in a voice so passive aggressive it could put most soccer moms out of commission. No, wait. Ugh. He wasn't going to get anywhere like this. Remember that part about not wanting to be alone? Because that part made Taako say something as dumb as, "I mean, you can shit in here if you want. Did you order the quesadillas? 'Cause that's how you're gonna end up shitting for two hours."

"I'm...fine on the shitting?" Kravitz had the _audacity_ to look worried. “Are you sure you're okay? You looked…a little dazed today.”

“I changed my mind, if you’re just here to figure me out, you can walk right back out there with the fajitas.” Great job, Taako, you internally asked for this _exact fucking scenario_ and drove it away immediately. Fantastic communication skills.

“That’s alright, I’ll leave you be.” Despite this, Kravitz stayed in place. He obviously still had shit to say, and Taako would say he wasn’t much of a fan of that, but…it wasn’t like Kravitz’ presence was making things _worse._ It’s what he wanted, but it’s not what he _said_ he wanted, which complicated things. At least Kravitz looked like he was genuinely on his way out, ready to bolt as soon as he got confirmation Taako wasn’t doing anything to hurt himself in the bathroom. “Oh, but I should tell you: Lup got us kicked out of the courthouse because she smashed the glass on the ground inside.”

“Sounds like her.” Some of the details fell into Taako’s mind after that. He must not have been completely zoned out. At least his own damn wedding was somewhere in his long term memory storage. Maybe he could _Memento_ this shit later to get the whole scene back.

“Right?” Kravitz shrunk in on himself a bit, and it _was not_ cute and it _was not_ endearing. “I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get to smash it.”

“Well…” Fine. Fuck it. Whatever. Snap decision. He couldn’t mope around in a bathroom forever, and, like, this wasn’t even Kravitz’ fault. Just saying words like a regular person helped bring him back to the real world, and he could work out his shit later, alone. He wormed his way out of his urinal prison and came a little closer to his actual, real life husband, which he was still processing, but. It wasn’t like Kravitz was the worst person to be stuck in this situation with. “How about we finish our food, and then we’ll get kicked out of _this_ place together?”

“Taako, I’m not smashing any glassware from a small business,” he said, although it was a weak rebuttal since it seemed like he really wanted to.

Fine, Taako could give him a little incentive.

“It’s not family owned, they got bought up by a chain years ago and are just masquerading as a mom-and-pop place. That’s why the food sucks now.” He let his shoulder brush Kravitz’ as he walked by and whispered, “smash all the glasses you want.”

“I will, then.” Kravitz followed him out of the bathroom, keeping his voice low as they stood in the hall next to the bad gender marker signs. “Also, not to psychoanalyze you, but…it’s fine if this is weird for you.”

“Oh _geez--”_

“I’m serious! None of this is normal, Taako, it’s okay if you zoned all the way out through our wedding.” Kravitz gave him a good amount of space. It would be annoying if Taako wasn’t getting used to the respect. “I just…want to make sure you’re okay now? I should have noticed earlier, but…”

“I’m good.” Kind of a lie, but not really. He felt better than he did five minutes ago. But things could have been better, too. “I mean, I will be.”

“Is there anything I can do to help out?” Kravitz’ face fell into something outwardly nervous, confirmation that, yes, this _was_ fucked up. Somehow, this helped more than anything Kravitz could say with his human mouth. “I don’t want to start off on this by weirding you out, or making you uncomfortable, or anything like that.”

“Oh, the invitation to break glassware wasn’t enough for you?” 

“If that’s what it takes, I’ll be glad to get kicked out of this--” Kravitz made a move to gesture at the restaurant as a whole, but his hand got caught in a cobweb like Gordon Ramsay inspecting plastic grapes on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares. “Well, I don’t want to call it a _lovely_ establishment.”

“I thought _lovely_ was southern-code for _horrible.”_

“I’m not _that_ southern.” Like the southern gentleman that he just denied he was, Kravitz extended a hand out to Taako. “You’ll tell me if it gets to be too much again, right?”

Taako wasn’t a botanist, so he had no idea what an olive branch looked like, but it probably looked exactly like Kravitz’ hand.

“As long as you don’t tell Lup, she’ll eat me alive,” he said, taking Kravitz by the hand in an overdramatic gesture.

It was just for symbolism, so he should have taken it back immediately, but Kravitz squeezed back before he had much of a chance. And at that point, Taako could just feign that he didn’t have the strength to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know, it's shorter and it didn't even have the whole wedding in there! but! i've always wanted to delve more into the psychological implications of getting a fake spouse, which i can NOT imagine is a fun weekend activity if you're someone like taako. PSYCHE, suckers, please get ready for the rest of this fic's ride, which is "haha funny fake marriage tropes but oops it's serious and there's a lot of problems associated with some of them. also i make dick jokes."
> 
> just as a note: i've been to a disappointing texmex restaurant that does that thing with the chips. it was the only good part of their food. i was delighted to break up the chips.
> 
> also another note: taako please tell people what you're feeling, it will prevent so many panic attacks


	9. All The Small Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just tying up some loose ends.

You know, it’s the little things that threaten to fuck up your insurance scam.

It was fine the first week after the marriage, since Kravitz had to immediately leave for a sales conference. But everyone asked Taako whether he missed Kravitz, what he did while he was gone, if the cat missed him, all that shit. Taako wasn’t even sure his answers were consistent, but it wasn’t typical of him to be completely sincere to everyone either, so it was probably fine. Kravitz, apparently, got many more questions from his boss, and Taako was subject to many questioning texts off hours so he could have a consistent story.

People visiting their offices asked why they hadn’t put up photos of each other in their workstations yet. Kravitz could get away with one of those shitty five dollar Michael’s desk frames to put a fake wedding photo into, but Taako had a whole ass bulletin board in his space. If he had enough room to put five pictures of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood with himself badly photoshopped in, he should have enough room for a few candids of his own husband. So, of course, they had to make a whole day of running around the city taking fake pictures for Taako to put on his board.

The fact they didn’t have any rings really raised some red flags. They could only use “the jeweler got our sizes wrong” excuse so many times. Eventually, they both ran off to a Target jewelry counter and got a couple nice looking but inexpensive rings to wear at work. This got people off Taako’s back, but Kravitz dealt with fancy people. He had to deal with a few upturned noses when he couldn’t fake a good enough brand name fast enough.

Then, they had to register for tent spaces in the work retreat camping area. Brad assumed they both registered for different spots because they had a disagreement on where they wanted to pitch tents, so he lumped them in with Carey and Killian in one of the bigger tents, away from both of the spots they originally wanted. The retreat wasn’t for another month, but _that_ was something to look forward to.

Because of the wild nature of their engagement and marriage, the news spread quicker than a flu virus in a cramped 2010s anime convention. The two of them were the hottest office gossip, which was honestly more uncomfortable than anything he had to do with Kravitz to keep the act up. Kravitz couldn’t get through a meeting without the higher-ups teasing him for his impulse marriage, and if Taako had to listen to one more person talking about how he just married Kravitz for his job _just loud enough_ for him to hear, he’d--

Well. He wouldn’t really do anything. It wasn’t like he was on HR’s good side, even if he was married to Kravitz. And at this point, he wasn’t confident that he could get away with doing anything on his own without being suspect numero uno.

But it just _sucked_ to have people watching him and Kravitz now. It meant there were more chances to fuck up, and if the general office population wasn’t so gullible, they would have. Taako got details wrong when Kravitz’ buddies asked him questions, but they brushed it off as Kravitz rushing into a marriage with some dumbass golddigger. Kravitz always went to the cafeteria lineup to get his lunch (at least when he was in the office), and people wondered why Taako didn’t pack him anything, since he always brought his own food.

There wasn’t a good answer for this other than the temporary one of, “shit, I didn’t know you’d be in town this week,” so. Now Taako packed two lunches every morning.

Also, now Kravitz sat with him and Lup and Barry at lunch.

“Okay, I’m confused,” Lup said, shoving a forkful of the world’s most plastic penne in her mouth, “since when do you eat in the cafeteria, again?”

“Didn’t you call this place, ‘the jail they keep everyone that breaks the Geneva convention in,’ once?” Barry asked, his voice smug but his face blank.

“People want me to be attached to the hip of--this guy!” Taako gestured to Kravitz, who gave a courteous little wave to the table like he didn’t just spend the beginning of his day working with them. Taako slid Kravitz’ lunch over to him, both identical brown sacks full of leftover sandwiches.

No, the sandwiches weren’t leftovers. Taako just put leftovers _in_ sandwiches.

“People can calm down.” Lup frowned. “I’m not even attached to Barry all the time, married couples need space.”

“Aren’t you? You work with him _and_ live with him _and_ still, somehow, go on dates and shit.” Taako tried his best to sound annoyed, but, whatever, he was really happy for his sister and his goofy in-law.

“Sometimes Barry and I get home and beeline into two separate rooms until dinner.” Lup leaned over to give Barry a kiss on the cheek. “Babe, I love you, but I also need some time to keep my rank and farm lootboxes.”

This time, Taako didn’t have to feign annoyance. “Not only are you still playing Overwatch, but you’re also still a fuckin’ Genji main?”

Lup just smiled with a look that was too smug for someone that consistently fell out of position in a cooperative game run by a company that really wasn’t looking too hot in the news anymore.

“Anyway,” Barry said, quick to get everyone back on track, “are the two of you doing alright?”

Taako dropped his head on the table. “How long are people going to be fuckin’--interested in my fake love life?”

“You really shouldn’t call it fake in such a crowded place,” Kravitz chided. He opened his lunch, and unwrapped the aluminum foil from his sandwich. He eyed at the contents inside with a suspicious curiosity. “People are listening to us a lot now.”

“See, that’s what I mean!” Still face down on the table, Taako reached for his lunch. Leftover sandwich was now comfort sandwich. “It fucking sucks.”

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz said, in the most honest way a person could while holding a fake marriage sandwich. “I’m sure it will calm down the longer we do this.”

It’s very difficult to imagine somebody with their head on a table eating a sandwich, but that’s exactly the kind of impossible physical feat Taako excelled at. This was sad Taako behavior, and Taako didn’t care if Lup could pick up on this and treat him different. He wanted to eat and not be seen.

And he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for that meddling Kravitz and his fake marriage sandwich.

“Taako, what _is_ this?” His voice did not sound like somebody that was enjoying a nice sandwich made by his fake husband. “I thought you were a _good_ chef?”

“Leftover sandwich.” Taako squinted at the middle of his sandwich. “I forgot that’s in this one. Might be chow mein and half an omelet?”

Kravitz put his sandwich back in the bag. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Lup groaned and pushed her lunch tray to Kravitz’ side of the table. “I don’t think I can either, Taako’s giving me death glares about this pasta. I can eat a leftover sandwich, it’ll be like college all over again.”

“Oh, so now you think I’m okay with my husband eating this awful pasta?” It didn’t matter, really, as long as Lup conceded that the pasta was as bad as Taako complained about. It was nice to be right. He didn’t get to gloat about it since the two swapped their lunches in silence, but hey. He knew he was right in his heart.

“Oh, by the way,” Lup said with a smile that screamed _I’m about to cause problems on purpose_ plastered on her face, “Barry and I are having date night tonight, so…”

“Ew, gross.” Taako kept his face and voice neutral, since pretending to be grossed out by PG mentions of his sister’s marriage was just a complimentary sibling service.

Lup perfected the art of ignoring him long ago, and seemed practically giddy to do so here. “We don’t need a ride tonight, we’re going straight to the Olive Garden.”

Taako took his head off the table, finally. This was a traitorous brother-in-law act. Could you disown an in-law? “You’re taking my dearest baby sister to the _Olive’s Garden?”_

Barry’s snort-laugh drowned out Lup’s insistence that she wasn’t the younger twin. “Only for bread, and then she wants to make a scene and leave so we can go to a better restaurant.”

Taako gave an appreciative nod to his sister. “This is why we’re related.”

She reciprocated, as if she was accepting an Emmy and not a compliment about her publicly disruptive dinner plans. “You’ll behave if we leave you… _alone_ with Kravitz, though?”

Kravitz choked on his drink.

“Lup, don’t break my husband.”

“You two should also have a little date night.” Lup knew what she was doing, and Taako was _not_ a fan. It was bad enough that the whole office was shipping them like an early 90s _Star Trek_ fanfiction passed around through mailing lists pre-internet, but his sister? His own flesh and blood? “He was gone _all week_ last week, didn’t you miss him?”

“Not you too, L--AUGH!” A sharp pain in his shin interrupted him, and years of having a sister told him that it was her fault without him even needing to look under the table for evidence. “What?”

Lup flicked her eyes to the side, and then went back to eating her bad pasta. Taako immediately clammed up, since the little nosy intern Amidala (or whatever his name was, the nerd one that didn’t know what business casual was with the giant glasses) was just around the corner.

Kravitz instinctually wrapped an arm around Taako’s shoulder once Amtrack got in sight range. He laughed as if it were a reaction to something Taako said. “Thank you, babe, glad to know I’m missed by more than the cat when I’m gone.”

Taako ignored the turning in his stomach when Kravitz gave him a pet name and leaned into the warm shoulder next to him.

Allison walked past the two of them without comment as Taako laughed, which all four of them counted as a win. If that kid wasn’t openly suspicious, they weren’t doing _that_ bad of a job.

“Anyway, like I was saying, you two should go on a real date,” Lup said, obviously keeping her language vague enough that it could be applied to a real _and_ fake couple. “It’s been too long.”

“I’m sorry, but as soon as we get home, I’m collapsing on our bed.” Kravitz poked at his pasta unenthusiastically. He ate it, and seemed to be able to get it down better than the sandwich, but not by much. “This week has been hell.”

“Same,” Taako said, his head going right back on the table.

 _“Oh,_ going to have some alone time together?” Lup raised her eyebrows a little too suggestively.

Taako used all his strength to try and break her shin under the table. This didn’t seem to do anything but make her laugh harder.

* * *

He knew Kravitz was dodging a fake date earlier when he talked about collapsing in bed, but _god_ did that sound nice when five o’clock rolled around.

It wasn’t even that the work day was _hard,_ it was just that there was nothing to do and the time just stretched on into what felt like infinity. The whole company’s email server was down, but it took hours for anyone to notice because people could _send_ mail, but nothing was going through. So everyone was just working on whatever they could find. Most days, the fact that nobody knew what the Reclaimers did was a badge of honor. Today, it was just annoying and boring. It would be nice to have _something_ to do with his time.

At least it was almost time to go home.

Their new after work routine developed more naturally than Taako expected for a fake marriage. About ten minutes after five, Lup, Barry, and Kravitz would show up near the Reclaimers’ offices to leave work. Kravitz would drop them off and run off to go see his cat. On really difficult days, Kravitz would go through some drive through and they’d annoy the cashier by trying to split one order four ways. Otherwise, they’d sit through traffic and shoot the breeze for a while. It was kind of nice, actually. Better than the bus.

Today, though, it was just Kravitz. He walked right up to Taako’s desk as he packed up his bag. Magnus and Merle rushed out of the office as soon as they were able to, so thankfully they had a little bit of privacy.

“Ready to go?”

“Yeah, hang on,” Taako said, as he slung his bag over his arm. “Still need to clock out.”

He tapped away at his keyboard and waited for the online payroll system to wake up. Shitty thing always took a good minute to load and punch. They didn’t even have part-time workers, why did they need a fucking online punchcard? Other than to make sure everyone was doing their hours, but still. Criminal offense.

Months ago, Taako could walk out of the lobby wearing a whole-ass hot dog costume and nobody would turn a single head. Now, just him walking with Kravitz got people a-buzzin’. It was a good thing Taako took Kravitz’ arm before they left the elevator. These fuckers would use any excuse of them not touching as another rumor to spread around.

This problem was amplified by the huge crowd of people watching the door.

Of course, it was pouring rain outside. Great. On any other day, it would create a nice ambiance with the open air lobby, just a nice little office worker aesthetic, but today? Hell no. It was just an excuse for more people to spy and snoop on the “lovely couple.” They could make a break for Kravitz’ car, but he parked on the other side of the lot this morning. Which was just _great._ They’d both be soaking wet by the time this was all over.

This was an inconvenience for everyone, but Kravitz genuinely looked like this would be the end of him. He looked at his jacket, which Taako could identify as one of his “nicer” ones, and hiked it over his head without showing his Goodwill armpit stain. “Hold on, I think…there’s a little break in the rain, I can run out and grab my umbrella.”

Normally, Taako wasn’t especially chivalrous, especially at the expense of his own comfort, but Kravitz looked like he was about to cry if he got a drop of water on his suit. “Nah, that’s, like, one of your only good suits, I’ll grab it.”

“Really?” The wide-eyed expression Kravitz put on was hilarious enough to make up for any wetness Taako would experience.

“Gotta make up for the leftover sandwich somehow.” This was a lie, because that sandwich was great, and Kravitz just didn’t have good taste. “And you’ll just waste your forty dollars on another shitty suit if that one gets ruined.”

“You’re…right.” Kravitz smiled brightly, a wave of relief washing over him. “Thank you, Taako.”

Without much warning, as Taako prepared himself to bolt out into the rain, a soft hand rested on his shoulder. With more warning, so that Taako could reasonably reject it, Kravitz leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. It was short and it felt natural. The only thing separating it from something like a kiss you’d get from an overbearing aunt was the intimate way Kravitz stayed in his space, still close to Taako, the sides of their heads almost touching.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, nudging his head off to the side, “some people are watching over there. Thought that would quell some of the rumors going on.”

“It’s fine…” The rain poured harder since Taako was distracted before, so he stood by the door to wait for another break. He kept his voice down so none of the spectators could hear. “Not like you liplocked me out of nowhere, and it’s not like I’d complain about it if you had to.”

“I wouldn’t do it willy-nilly, that’s, um, breaking a few boundaries, but.” Kravitz fiddled with the strap of his bag, unable to look Taako in the eye. “If we were in some kind of emergency, you would be…okay with that?”

There were still a couple oglers off to the side. Apparently a cheek kiss was still too ambiguous for them. Taako wanted plausible deniability in the future, and didn’t want to answer yes or no, even though the answer was--

Fuck it. He wrapped one arm around Kravitz’ shoulder to bring him down and kiss him. Very quick. Just enough to get his point across. Wasn’t like it was any harm to Taako, kissing a handsome guy like Kravitz. And, hey, Kravitz was the one that asked if this was okay in the first place. Even if it was still up in the air.

When he pulled away, Kravitz chased him with a dazed look on his face, and soon enough he faked a big goofy smile. Taako had to give him props. He was a good actor. “Oh--okay, yeah, that’s. Sure. Message received.”

“Not all the time,” he said, a stern reminder.

“Of course not!” Kravitz hunched his shoulders over and lowered his voice again. God, was he _nervous?_ “I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

The most wicked of expressions crept on Taako’s face. “Oh, so _you_ wouldn’t be uncomfortable?”

“I don’t want to creep you out, but.” Kravitz didn’t normally care about being in the spotlight as far as his coworkers were concerned, but he immediately shrunk down like a piece of cubed meat in a frying pan when Taako teased him. “I mean, it’s not--really a secret, you’re not an unattractive person.”

“Well geez, kind of hard to figure out that little word puzzle when you twist your words like that,” Taako said, unable to tell if he was flirting for real or not anymore.

“You’re very nice to look at,” Kravitz said, in complete sincerity. Like _he_ knew whether he was taking this seriously or not. “I don’t know if you’d prefer being called pretty or handsome, but I would categorize you as either one.”

“I mean, either is fine…” Taako’s face felt like he got too close to the oven with it. He didn’t expect Kravitz to actually give an answer. But, it’s not like he doesn’t call Kravitz handsome, too, so it was probably just a common courtesy. Even if Kravitz thought it was semi-true. Which. _Did he?_

It didn’t matter, probably.

“I think we’re done being watched.” Kravitz gestured to the now-empty lobby, empty as it usually is out of business hours. Taako didn’t even see anyone leave. He wasn’t paying attention to the onlookers anymore. That helped to cope with their existence.

“Probably rushed out when they thought there was a chance we’d drop our pants in here.”

Kravitz snorted, building immunity to Taako’s…Taako-isms. “I’m not doing that in the office lobby, Taako.”

“They don’t know that!” Taako pushed his shoulder. “We’re newlyweds!”

“Sure.” Kravitz laughed. Since they were alone in the lobby now, his laugh took over the whole space. “I think maybe…the rain’s slowing down.”

The clouds were still threatening a downpour outside, but held their own for the time being. Taako and Kravitz took the opportunity to rush across the lot. If Taako believed in all that fate junk, he’d call it a miracle, because as soon as they closed the car doors, the sky let out another steady drizzle. Kravitz excused himself to check the traffic before they drove off. It was a habit of his that saved their asses a few times, since they could take alternate routes when things were too choked up.

“Oh no.” Kravitz blinked at his phone.

Taako tried to climb over the seat to see. “What?”

“There’s an accident out on the freeway, so we’ll probably be stuck in traffic for a lot longer…maybe a couple hours?”

“Ugh _hhh.”_ Taako sank into the passenger’s seat. He stared at the car’s roof, too tired of this bullshit. He didn’t want to be stuck in a car _that long._ “Let’s grab dinner first.”

“Good idea.” Kravitz turned on the car and adjusted his mirrors. “Do you want to just sit down somewhere? Might as well wait until it’s all clear, right?”

“Yeah. I want Steak and Shake.” 

Thankfully, the Steak and Shake was around the corner. Not so thankfully, it was raining and every driver was in a frenzied panic, so it took twenty minutes to get there. Taako got bored and checked his phone. No texts from Lup or Barry, so hopefully they weren’t in Olive Garden jail, nothing from the boner squad, but--

“Ah, shit,” Taako said as Kravitz pulled into the parking lot.

“What?”

“Email servers came back up.” Taako scrolled through his phone’s email client. For some reason, he couldn’t filter ads on the mobile app, so he had to scroll past a bunch of junk mail to see the important shit. “Got like, five emails from Brad.”

“Well…” Kravitz put his car in park and turned the key. “Let’s see what damage there is this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3
> 
> Next time I post it'll be right before I get new horizons shipped to me so HOPEFULLY I GET ENOUGH WRITTEN TO GET A LITTLE BUFFER because i just want to spend all my free time in my new town!!!!


	10. House Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako and Kravitz discuss how not to get caught...again.

The two of them waited until they ordered their food before opening the emails from Brad.

It was unclear whether this was procrastination or an exercise in patience. On one hand, Taako was perfectly fine leaving the news to Future Taako. But also, some voice in the back of his head told him he was in deep shit, and he’d rather know why now than later. He could only distract himself by pointing out the horrible decorations in the Steak and Shake for so long. He tried to make fun of the aluminum sign that only had a 50s housewife painted on with the phrase “It’s a Meal!” to keep his mind off things, but Kravitz didn’t pay much attention. It was like he was in another world. As soon as they put their orders in, Kravitz whipped out his phone and tapped away at it nervously.

“Can’t believe all these young people have their phones out at dinner all the time,” Taako said, but knew his joke fell flat as soon as it left his mouth. Kravitz’ expression didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

“Uh huh.” Kravitz didn’t address him at all.

Taako waited to see if Kravitz would _elaborate_ on the emails or if he’d just…sit there staring at them. “So, what’s our damage?”

Kravitz shoved his phone back in his pocket, took a sugar packet from the side of the table, and emptied it on his tongue.

“That bad?” Taako unlocked his phone to check his email. It couldn’t be _so_ bad that Kravitz wasn’t even talking. He opened his email app and skimmed all five emails.

Oh. It _was_ that bad.

“Alright,” he said, voice cracking more than any of the four years he spent in high school combined, “so, I guess we forgot that they’d…take a look at our addresses.”

“Most married couples live together.” Kravitz laid his forehead on the table, and then brought it right back up. He wiped off his forehead. The tables didn’t look like they were cleaned all that often. “I don’t know _why_ we didn’t think of that.”

“Well, some shitty couples don’t live together.”

“But we’re pretending to be _newlyweds.”_ Kravitz unlocked his phone and read the emails again, as if a second read-through would reveal less shitty news. “Brad thinks we’re very much in love with each other, which I’m _sure_ is the only reason why we got so much leeway with the court date thing. He’s the only person who can vouch for us to the insurance company, and _also_ the first person to tell them we’re committing fraud.”

“Okay! Okay, but this is fine, right?” Taako tried to get Kravitz’ attention with eye contact, but it didn’t work too well with Kravitz’ eyes glued to his phone. “Just tell him I’m livin’ at your place.”

“I could, but…then we’d run into worse troubles later.”

Like what?”

“You know, taxes. The census. _Mail?”_ Kravitz sighed and put down his phone, the same heavy expression crossing his face that was a little too familiar to Taako at this point. “If you’re still paying rent, and someone catches onto our little scheme, that would be…a big piece of evidence in court.”

“You think we’re gonna get sued by Brad?” Taako asked, looking at Brad’s email signature with no less than three unicorn emojis in it.

“Maybe not Brad, but the insurance company…” Kravitz held his head in one hand, looking like he pulled three all-nighters in a row. “Let’s be realistic, Taako, I couldn’t even get them to pay for my antibiotics because it wasn't a preventative service, do you think they’d be _fine_ with us stealing hundreds of dollars from them?”

“As if they’d check in on just two guys, right?” Even after he asked, Taako knew what the answer would be.

“I wish that was the case.”

The server came over with their food as they sat there staring at their phones. They didn’t say anything. Taako didn’t blame them for dropping the food and bolting, he didn’t imagine the two of them looked all that friendly. Server probably picked up on these absolutely disastrous vibes. If Taako was working the floor like that, he’d ignore them too.

Taako tried to focus on his fries, which were cut so thin that the oil from the fryer made them soggy, but couldn’t even bring himself to complain about food. That’s how he knew he was bad off. It felt like every time they figured out a workaround to this insurance scam, they were pushed back five steps. Sure, it was hard to commit insurance fraud on purpose, but that didn’t mean that Taako necessarily enjoyed all the extra steps. This was supposed to be an easy forty dollars, and now he and Kravitz were in too deep to cancel it.

Backing out wasn’t an option.

The only way through this was to lean farther into it.

“Wait a minute.” Taako picked his head up, looking up from his food for the first time after his plate touched the table. “This is gonna seem. Extreme, but…”

Kravitz laughed, even though there wasn’t any humor in it. “You want to move in with me, don’t you?”

“I mean!” Taako’s face betrayed him by heating up, like he had a reason to be embarrassed by anything Kravitz could say. “I don’t _want_ to, but.”

“It…is the most logical end to this, right?” he asked, voice more shaken than a can of soda that fell out of the back of a car and down a hill. “We should do that so we don’t get in massive trouble or debt.”

“Right…” Taako let out a breath. It was a great idea, but if Kravitz wasn’t a fan, it was back to the drawing board. “If that’s not, uh, what you’re lookin’ for, then we could probably figure something else ou--”

“Can I think about it?” Kravitz leaned forward, determined for…whatever reason. Taako was about to give him a way out of this situation, dude should have calmed down. Almost got off the hook entirely there. “I’m not against it, I just…need some time.”

“I mean, yeah?” Taako felt his shoulders tighten. What was Kravitz’ game here? “You let me think about the fuckin’ wedding.”

“It won’t be for very long, I just need to run some numbers in my head,” he said, turning his attention back to his food like this didn’t happen.

Taako _would_ ask why he was more worried about numbers than the reality of living with him, but he wasn’t about to ruin his chance of fixing the situation again. He didn’t know how much energy he had for more weird surprises like this.

* * *

It didn’t even take an hour for Kravitz to bring the topic back up.

They ate the rest of their dinner in near silence, only breaking it to discuss the logistics of the bill and the drive home in the rain. There was still traffic even after dinner was all done, so it was completely dark by the time Kravitz hopped on the interstate. They stayed quiet in the car not only because of the situation, but also because the rain battered on the windshield so hard that it was difficult to hear anything other than a steady stream of rainfall.

“I…think I have my answer, but I just want to make sure you’re okay with it.” Kravitz kept his hands gripped tight on the wheel and his eyes forward as he spoke. There was something he hadn’t brought up yet, and Taako couldn’t say he was excited to figure out what it was.

“I mean, I’m fine living with you, I thought we already covered that?” Luckily, the rain was so loud that Kravitz probably couldn’t hear the shakiness in Taako’s voice. “You’re not talking about, like, something else, right?”

“Well--no, it’s still. The same. We’d just be living together, I was just…” Kravitz hit the end of the traffic line and slowed the car to a stop, his words slowing from both his concentration and his nerves. “Thinking about the process.”

“You can stay at my place, or I can go to yours, I don’t really care.”

Kravitz stayed silent. He had enough of a lapse in thought that another car got irritated and passed him in the line.

Taako leaned over, talking over the pouring rain and Kravitz’ inattention. “I dunno if you have a guest room, but I don’t. If we stayed at my place we could probably cram two beds in my room, yeah?”

“What if we found a new place?” he asked, face still callously blank.

“Uh.” Taako shrugged. Sure, he hated his landlord, but he liked being close to Lup and Barry. They were considering looking for a new place soon, but… “I’m not really opposed to that, I guess? The rent would be more if we do a two bedroom, but I guess if we’re splitting it it’s not that bad?”

“I’ve…been saving up for something bigger.” Kravitz inched forward in traffic. Now he was too attentive to his driving, like he didn’t want to even think of looking at Taako. “That’s why, um, why my budget is so tight. It’s not _just_ the job and everything that comes with that.”

Ah. Right. Kravitz always _did_ seem cagey about his finances.

“You in debt or something?” Taako asked, which wasn’t the most sensitive way to put that question, but when was Taako ever concerned about sensitivity?

 _“Also that,”_ he said too quickly and in too high a pitch. He took in a stressed breath and kept going. “Just student loans, you know. And, um. One little problem from when I used to gamble. But that’s it. It doesn’t have anything to do with…what I want to buy.”

“Okay…” Oh, that figures. He probably wanted to find a much cheaper place. Understandable, but it’s not like they would be able to get much cheaper than halving one of their rents. How much money was this guy trying to save anyway? “So, what’s this big purchase?”

“I’ve, um, wanted to own property for a while.” Kravitz rubbed his thumbs on the steering wheel. “But, you know, it’s difficult when you…don’t have family money anymore.”

“Ugh, if only your rich parents liked you,” Taako said, with a quick glance over to see if that pissed Kravitz off beyond repair. God damn Kravitz for giving him _morals._

“That would make this easier, for sure.” He didn’t seem angry. Just frustrated and worried. “I…do have a down payment, though.”

Taako let the rain fall around them for a solid minute. He had to, fucking, rearrange his _whole_ thoughts on Kravitz for that one. Dude wanted a _house?_ Like, obviously if he was a baby boomer years ago he’d have one by now, but they were _late millennials_ and unless Kravitz’ parents suddenly liked him overnight, that wasn’t going to happen soon. Except? That’s what he was worried about?

“A down payment,” Taako repeated, still in shock, “for, like, a _house?”_

“Not enough for a house. I have maybe sixteen thousand dollars saved away?” Kravitz turned to see Taako gawking and sighed. “That’s…not a lot, at least for a down payment.”

“Geez, what _I’d_ do with that kinda money,” he whispered out, voice wispy and tired.

“I know, it might seem silly to put that away instead of using it to make my finances easier, but…” Kravitz let out a breath and put his car in park. The traffic was at a standstill and there was no way they were moving forward anytime soon. “I pay _so much_ in rent. And…it just bothers me that the money disappears instead of going into something bigger.”

“Wouldn’t it disappear into a house anyway?”

“I mean, I would be working off a loan. That feels more like progress to me.” Kravitz finally looked Taako in the eye for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, voice barely audible over the rain. “So, I guess, what I’m saying is…would you mind if we, bought something instead of renting?”

Taako tried to be chill about all this-- “I don’t have thousands of dollars like that, dude.” --but, of course, this was Taako.

“No! I don’t mean we buy a house.” Kravitz slung his arm over the whatever-you-call-the-area between-two-carseats. “I mean…we could buy a condo? I have enough down for that. And we’d split the mortgage payments as long as you lived with me.”

“So it’s just like _I’d_ be paying rent?” Taako wasn’t going to lie, Kravitz _was_ more attractive than his current landlord.

“Exactly.” Kravitz picked at some chipping pleather on Taako’s seat. “And, it’s not like I’m throwing away that money, when I want something more permanent I’d just…sell the condo. I’d get all the money back, and possibly more, if the value went up.”

“Oh, so you just want to get into real estate?”

“A little.” He laughed. “Does that scare you?”

“A little.” Taako couldn’t bring himself to laugh but he _could_ give Kravitz a sly grin and lazily point towards the traffic, which decided to start moving for once. “But, I mean. I can be swayed. Run the numbers with me.”

“I can do that.” With the fluid motion of someone who’d been in traffic far too many times in his life, Kravitz took his car out of park and continued like everything was business as usual. “So, I checked online when we were eating. With my budget, and the down payment I have…even if I go near the maximum end of my budget, my monthly payments for paying off a condo loan would only be…about nine hundred dollars a month?”

“What, really?” That…couldn’t be right. That was so fucking low. “My place is eleven hundred.”

“Exactly. Mine is fifteen hundred.” The rain slowed and Kravitz cut the speed on his wipers. “So, if we cut that in half--”

“Like, four-fifty a month?” Taako threw his hands in the air and relaxed. Yeah, this would work. “Nope, yeah, that’s it. I’m sold.”

Kravitz cast another nervous glance towards Taako. “Are you sure? It might…be awkward.”

“Hell no it won’t! All of what we’ve done so far was awkward for forty dollars, but like…geez, that’s hundreds of dollars, dude.”

“It is, I just…don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Kravitz said, mopey but expectant. He was giving Taako an out, but _Taako did not want to lose the possibility of a four hundred and fifty dollar rent payment._

“You’re not gonna do anything. Not like we’re gonna sleep in the same bed, right?” he asked, in a tone that was meant to cause problems on purpose.

“Right! Right, that’s--of course.” Kravitz cleared his throat and paid more attention to the road. If Taako was on the market, he’d call his embarrassment endearing. “Of course, we’d look for a two bedroom. That goes without saying.”

“You have an idea where to look?”

“No, we’d have to shop around…” Kravitz got to their exit and sped up, passing the rest of the traffic that was still inching forward farther down the road. “And I’d want you there, too, because you’d be living in it too.”

“Do we have the time for that? Brad seemed a little…abrupt? With these emails?” Taako opened his email app back up to scroll through them. He did seem…worried. It wasn’t really clear whether he was suspicious or if he was worried for Taako and Kravitz’ relationship, but neither was a really good scenario for the two of them.

Kravitz groaned as he hopped off the interstate. “That’s what I’m stuck on…”

Obviously, Taako had never bought a house before, so he didn’t know how to _lie_ about buying a house. It was hard enough to lie about a relationship he didn’t have, but a condo? He barely knew the difference between a condo and an apartment. He _did,_ however, know a lot about picky couples choosing houses from all of the HGTV he used to binge with his sister. And he knew that it could take _a while_ for people to find what they wanted if they were divas about it.

And, it’s not like he’d have trouble convincing people _he_ was being a diva about it.

“How about we just…tell Brad that we’re waiting on finding the perfect place? It takes longer to buy a place than rent one, doesn’t it?”

If Kravitz was a cartoon, he would’ve had a little light bulb above his head. “We can say our last offer fell through and it’s been tough to recover. And you’ve just been staying at my old place for the time being. I don’t think it’ll be too bad if your address is wrong for a few weeks.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s…a good idea.” Taako shot a quick text to Lup to tell her he was going to do something hilariously awful. “Let’s do it.”

“You’re comfortable with that?”

“As long as you’re not a shitty roommate, sure.” Taako laughed once, unable to help himself now. “You want to draft up some kinda house rules? So we don’t tear at each other’s throats?”

Kravitz smiled as he pulled into the parking lot of Taako's apartment complex. “I feel like you’re joking, but that’s not the worst idea.”

Taako reached for his bag down at his legs. “I do _not_ want to get a lawyer just to figure out who’s buying toilet paper every month.” 

“We don’t have to talk about it now.” Kravitz stayed quiet as he parked, but didn't immediately move to throw Taako out of his car after turning the gas off. “What sort of place would make you happiest? If we’re going to go house hunting we should…have a wishlist.”

“It’d be nice if the kitchen wasn’t shitty," Taako said absentmindedly as he gathered his things.

“You’re not even asking for a good kitchen?” Kravitz teased.

“Dude, I know how expensive a good kitchen is.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Alright, then I’ll call a realtor and ask them for the most average kitchen in the city.”

“I want ample countertop space, but all covered in laminate," Taako said, pausing for laughter. “Decently rated appliances, with none of them matching," he added, waiting for Kravitz' wails of mirthful protest to die down. “Solid wood cabinets, but _painted.”_

“What do you have against painted wood?” Kravitz asked through tears, doubled over his steering wheel.

“Holy shit. Don’t talk to me.” Taako opened his door to bolt out of the car towards his apartment before the rain got worse. “I want a divorce.”

He quickly said his goodbyes to Kravitz, still laughing his ass off. Taako tried not to think too hard about why he was proud of Kravitz' laughing fits. He ran into his apartment, thankfully shielded from most of the rain. He checked his phone, hoping for a text back from Lup, but only found another one from Kravitz.

_If you're going to divorce me, do it after we go on house hunters. ;)_

Taako ignored the bubbling feeling in his chest.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting this early because! ya boy got animal crossing predownloaded on the switch, so i'm not gonna want to use ANY time uploading this fic tomorrow, i have animal crossing to play


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